BALLADS AND SONNETS. 



Uniform with this Volume. 



POEMS. By Dante Gabriel Rossetti. i6mo. 
Cloth. Price, $1.50. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, 

Publishers. 



Ballads and Sonnets. 



BY 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 



3 





* iR9n 



BOSTON: 

ROBEIfTS BROTHERS. 

1882. 






University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



7^ 



TO 

THEODORE WATTS, 

THE FRIEND WHOM MY VERSE WON FOR ME, 
ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



CONTENTS. 



BALLADS. 



Page 

Rose Mary, Part 1 3 

Beryl-Song 17 

Rose Mary, Part II -19 

Beryl-Song 34 

Rose Mary, Part III 2>'^ 

Beryl-Song 49 

The White Ship 

(Henry I. of England) 53 

The King's Tragedy 

(James I. of Scots) *'•!?> 



CONTENTS. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



A SONNET-SEQUENCE. 



Page 

Introductory Sonnet 117 

Part I. Youth and Change. 

I. Love Enthroned 119 

*II. Bridal Birth 120 

*III. Love's Testament I2f 

*IV. Lovesight 122 

V. Heart's Hope 123 

*VL The Kiss 124 

*Vn. Supreme Surrender •. . . 125 

VI n. Love's Lovers 126 

*IX. Passion and Worship 127 

*X. The Portrait 128 

*XI. The Love-Letter 129 

XII. The Lovers' Walk 130 

XIII. Youth's Antiphony 131 

' In this table, the sonnets marked * are those which appeared in the author's 
former volume. 



CONTENTS. XI 

Page 

XIV. Youth's Spring-Tribute 132 

>: *XV. The Birth-Bond I33 

*XVI. A Day of Love I34 

XVII. Beauty's Pageant I35 

XVIII. Genius in Beauty 136 

4- XIX. Silent Noon i37 

XX. Gracious Moonlight 138 

*XXI. Love-Sweetness 139 

XXII. Heart's Haven 140 

> *XXIII. Love's Baubles M^ 

XXIV. Pride of Youth 142 

*XXV. Winged Hours i43 

XXVI. Mid-Rapture ^44 

Ji^XXVII. Heart's Compass H5 

XXVIII. Soul-Light 146 

XXIX. The Moonstar H7 

XXX. Last Fire ^8 

XXXI. Her Gifts H9 

XXXII. Equal Troth ^5° 

XXXIII. Venus Victrix ^51 

XXXIV. The Dark Glass ^S^ 

XXXV. The Lamp's Shrine ^S3 

*XXXVI. Life-in-Love ^54 

*XXXVII. The Love-Moon ^SS 



XI 1 CONTENTS. 

Page 

*XXXVIII. The Morrow's Message : 156 

*XXXIX. Sleepless Dreams 157 

\XL. Severed Selves . 158 

XLI. Through Death to Love 159 

XLII. Hope Overtaken 160 

XLIII. Love and Hope 161 

XLIV. Cloud and Wind 162 

*XLV. Secret Parting 163 

*XLVL Parted Love 164 

*XLVn. Broken Music 165 

*XLVin. Death-in-Love 166 

*XLIX. Willowwood 167 

*L. Willowwood. II 168 

*LI. Willowwood. Ill 169 

*LIL Willowwood. IV 170 

LIII. Without Her 171 

LIV. Love's Fatahty 172 

*LV. Stillborn Love 173 

LVI. True Woman. I. Herself 174 

LVII. True Woman. II. Her Love .... 175 

LVI II. True Woman. III. Her Heaven . .176 

LIX. Love's Last Gift 177 



CONTENTS. xiii 



Part II. Change and Fate. 

Page 

LX. Transfigured Life 178 

LXI. The Song-Throe 179 < 

LXII. The Soul's Sphere 180 

*LXIII. Inclusiveness 181 

LXIV. Ardor and Memory 182 

*LXV. Known in Vain 183 

LXVI. The Heart of the Night 184 

*LXVII. The Landmark 185 

*LXVIII. A Dark Day 186 

*LXIX. Autumn Idleness 187 

*LXX. The Hill Summit 188 

*LXXI. The Choice. 1 189 

*LXXII. The Choice. II 190 

*LXXIII. The Choice. Ill 191 

*LXXIV. Old and New Art. I. St. Luke the 

Painter 192 X 

LXXV. Old and New Art. II. Not as These . 193 y 
LXXVI. Old and New Art. III. The Husband- 

men 194 

*LXXVII. Soul's Beauty 195 

*LXXVIII. Body's Beauty 196 



XIV CONTENTS. 

Page 

*LXXIX. The Monochord 197 

LXXX. From Dawn to Noon 198 

LXXXI. Memorial Thresholds 199 

*LXXXI I. Hoarded Joy 200 

*LXXXIII. Barren Spring 201 

*LXXXIV. Farewell to the Glen 202 

*LXXXV. Vain Virtues 203 

*LXXXVI. Lost Days 204 

*LXXXVII. Death's Songsters 205 

LXXXVIII. Hero's Lamp 206 

LXXXIX. The Trees of the Garden 207 

*XC. " Retro me, Sathana ! " 208 

*XCL Lost on Both Sides 209 

*XCn. The Sun's Shame. 1 210 

XCin. The Sun's Shame. II 211 

XCIV. Michelangelo's Kiss 212 

*XCV. The Vase of Life 213 

XCVI. Life the Beloved 214 

*XCVII. A Superscription 215 

*XCVIII. He and I 216 

*XCIX. Newborn Death. I. . 217 

*C. Newborn Death. II 218 

*CI. The One Hope . . , 219 



CONTENTS. XV 



LYRICS, &c. 

Page 

Soothsay 223 

Chimes 228 

Parted Presence 235 

A Death-Parting 238 

Spheral Change 240 

Sunset Wings 242 

Song and Music 244 

Three Shadows 245 

Alas, So Long ! 247 

Adieu 249 

Insomnia 251 

Possession 253 

The Cloud Confines 254 



SONNETS. 

For the Holy Family (by Michelangelo) 259 

For Spring (by Sandro Botticelli) 260 

Five EngHsh Poets — 

I, Thomas Chatterton 261 

II. William Blake 262 



x\i CONTENTS. 

Page 

Five English Poets — 

III. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 263 

IV. John Keats 264 

V. Percy Bysshe Shelley 265 

Tiber, Nile, and Thames 266 

The Last Three from Trafalgar 267 

Czar Alexander II. 268 

Words on the Window-pane 269 

Winter 270 

Spring 271 

The Church-Porch 272 

Untimely Lost. (Oliver Madox Brown) 273 

Place de la Bastille, Paris 274 

'• Found " (for a Picture) . 275 

A Sea-Spell (for a Picture) 276 

Fiammetta (for a Picture) 277 

The Day-Dream (for a Picture) 278 

Astarte Syriaca (for a Picture) 279 

Proserpina (per un Quadro) 280 

Proserpina (for a Picture) 281 

La Bella Mano (per un Quadro) ^ . 282 

La Bella Mano (for a Picture) 283 



ROSE MARY. 



ROSE MARY. 

Of her two fights with the Beryl-stone : 
Lost the firsts but the second wott. 

PART I. 

*• Mary mine that art Mary's Rose, 

Come in to me from the garden-close. 

The sun sinks fast with the rising dew, 

And we marked not how the faint moon grew ; 

But the hidden stars are caUing you. 

'' Tall Rose Mary, come to my side, 
And read the stars if you 'd be a bride. 
In hours whose need was not your own, 
While you were a young maid yet ungrown, 
You 've read the stars in the Beryl-stone. 

" Daughter, once more I bid you read ; 
But now let it be for your own need : 
Because to-morrow, at break of day, 
To Holy Cross he rides on his way. 
Your knight Sir James of Heronhaye. 



ROSE MARY. 

" Ere he wed you, flower of mine, 
For a heavy shrift he seeks the shrine. 
Now hark to my words and do not fear ; 
111 news next I have for your ear y 
But be you strong, and our help is here. 

" On his road, as the rumor 's rife. 
An ambush waits to take his life. 
He needs will go, and will go alone ; 
Where the peril lurks may not be known ; 
But in this glass all things are shown." 

Pale Rose Mary sank to the floor : — 
" The night will come if the day is o'er ! " 
" Nay, heaven takes counsel, star with star, 
And help shall reach your heart from afar : 
A bride you '11 be, as a maid you are." 

The lady unbound her jewelled zone 
And drew from her robe the Beryl-stone, 
Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere, — 
World of our world, the sun's compeer. 
That bears and buries the toiling year. 



ROSE MARY. 

With shuddering light 't was stiired and strewn 
Like the cloud-nest of the wading moon : 
Freaked it was as the bubble's ball, 
Rainbow-hued through a misty pall 
Like the middle light of the waterfall. 

Shadows dwelt in its teeming girth 
Of the known and unknown things of earth ; 
The cloud above and the wave around, — 
The central fire at the sphere's heart bound, 
Like doomsday prisoned underground. 

A thousand years it lay in the sea 
With a trealfeure wrecked from Thessaly ; 
Deep it lay 'mid the coiled sea-wrack, 
But the ocean- spirits found the track : 
A soul was lost to win it back. 

The lady upheld the wondrous thing : — 
" 111 fare " (she said) "with a fiend's-fairing : 
But Moslem blood poured forth like wine 
Can hallow Hell, 'neath the Sacred Sign ; 
And my lord brought this from Palestine. 



I\'OSE MARY. 

" Spirits who fear the Blessed Rood 
Drove forth the accursed multitude 
That heathen worship housed herein, — 
Never again such home to win, 
Save only by a Christian's sin. 

" All last night at an altar fair 

I burnt strange fires and strove with prayer ; 

Till the flame paled to the red sunrise, 

All rites I then did solemnize ; 

And the spell lacks nothing but your eyes." 

Low spake maiden Rose Mary : — 
" O mother mine, if I should not see ! " 
" Nay, daughter, cover your face no more, 
But bend love's heart to the hidden lore. 
And you shall see now as heretofore." 

Paler yet were the pale cheeks grown 
As the gray eyes sought the Beryl-stone : 
Then over her mother's lap leaned she. 
And stretched her thrilled throat passionately. 
And sighed from her soul, and said, " I see." 



ROSE MAR v. 

Even as she spoke, they two were 'ware 
Of music-notes that fell through the air ; 
A chiming shower of strange device, 
Drop echoing drop, once twice and thrice, 
As rain may fall in Paradise. 

An instant come, in an instant gone, 

No time there was to think thereon. 

The mother held the sphere on her knee : — 

" Lean this way and speak low to me. 

And take no note but of what you see." 

" I see a man with a besom gray 

That sweeps the flying dust away." 

" Ay, that comes first in the mystic sphere ; 

But now that the way is swept and clear, 

Heed well what next you look on there." 

" Stretched aloft and adown I see 
Two roads that part in waste -country : 
The glen lies deep and the ridge stands tall ; 
What 's great below is above seen small. 
And the hill-side is the valley-wall." 



ROSE MARV. 

" Stream-bank, daughter, or moor and moss, 
Both roads will take to Holy Cross. 
The hills are a weary waste to wage ; 
But what of the valley-road's presage ? 
That way must tend his pilgrimage." 

*' As 'twere the turning leaves of a book, 
The road runs past me as I look ; 
Or it is even as though mine eye 
Should watch calm waters filled with sky 
\\liile lights and clouds and wings went by.' 

*' In every covert seek a spear ; 
They '11 scarce lie close till he draws near." 
" The stream has spread to a river now ; 
The stiff blue sedge is deep in the slough, 
But the banks are bare of shrub or bough." 

" Is there any roof that near at hand 
Might shelter yield to a hidden band? " 
" On the further bank I see but one, 
And a herdsman now in the sinking sun 
Unyokes his team at the threshold-stone." 



ROSE MARY. 

" Keep heedful watch by the water's edge, — 
Some boat might lurk 'neath the shadowed sedge.' 
" One slid but now 'twixt the winding shores, 
But a peasant woman bent to the oars 
And only a young child steered its course. 

" Mother, something flashed to my sight ! — 
Nay, it is but the lapwing's flight. — 
What glints there like a lance that flees ? — 
Nay, the flags are stirred in the breeze, 
And the water 's bright tlirough the dart-rushes. 

" Ah ! vainly I search from side to side : — 
Woe 's me ! and where do the foemen hide ? 
Woe 's me ! and perchance I pass them by, 
And under the new dawn's blood-red sky 
Even where I gaze the dead shall lie." 

Said the mother : " For dear love's sake. 
Speak more low, lest the spell should break." 
Said the daughter : " By love's control, 
My eyes, my words, are strained to the goal ; 
But oh ! the voice that cries in my soul ! " 



lO ROSE MARV. 

" Hush, sweet, hush ! be calm and behold." 
" I see two floodgates broken and old : 
The grasses wave o'er the ruined weir. 
But the bridge still leads to the breakwater ; 
And — mother, mother, O mother dear ! " 

The damsel clung to her mother's knee, 

And dared not let the shriek go free ; 

Low she crouched by the lady's chair. 

And shrank blindfold in her fallen hair. 

And whispering said, " The spears are there ! " 

The lady stooped aghast from her place, 
And cleared the locks from her daughter's face. 
" More 's to see, and she swoons, alas ! 
Look, look again, ere the moment pass ! 
One shadow comes but once to the glass. 

" See you there what you saw but now ? '* 
" I see eight men 'neath the willow-bough. 
All over the weir a wild growth 's spread : 
Ah me ! it will hide a living head 
As well as the water hides the dead. 



ROSE MARY. II 

" They lie by the broken water-gate 

As men who have a while to wait. 

The chiefs high lance has a blazoned scroll, — 

He seems some lord of tithe and toll 

With seven squires to his bannerole. 

" The little pennon quakes in the air, 
I cannot trace the blazon there : — 
Ah ! now I can see the field of blue, 
The spurs and the merlins two and two ; — 
It is the Warden of Holycleugh ! " 

" God be thanked for the thing we know ! 
You have named your good knight's mortal foe. 
Last Shrovetide in the tourney-game 
He sought his life by treasonous shame ; 
And this way now doth he seek the same. 

" So, fair lord, such a thing you are ! 
But we too watch till the morning star. 
Well, June is kind and the moon is clear : 
Saint Judas send you a merry cheer 
For the night you lie at Warisweir ! 



12 ROSE MARY. 

" Now, sweet daughter, but one more sight, 
And you may lie soft and sleep to-night. 
We know in the vale what perils be : 
Now look once more in the glass, and see 
If over the hills the road lies free." 

Rose Mary pressed to her mother's cheek, 
And almost smiled but did not speak ; 
Then turned again to the saving spell, 
With eyes to search and with lips to tell 
The heart of things invisible. 

" Again the shape with the besom gray . 
Comes back to sweep the clouds away. 
Again I stand where the roads divide ; 
But now all 's near on the steep hillside, 
And a thread far down is the rivertide." 

" Ay, child, your road is o'er moor and moss. 

Past Holycleugh to Holy Cross. 

Our hunters lurk in the valley's wake. 

As they knew which way the chase would take 

Yet search the hills for your true love's sake." 



ROSE MARV. 13 

" Swift and swifter the waste runs by, 
And nought I see but the heath and the sky ; 
No brake is there that could hide a spear, 
And the gaps to a horseman's sight he clear ; 
Still past it goes, and there 's nought to fear»" 

" Fear no trap that you cannot see, — 

They 'd not lurk yet too warily. 

Below by the weir they lie in sight, 

And take no heed how they pass the night 

Till close they crouch with the morning light." 

"The road shifts ever and brings in view 
Now first the heights of Holycleugh : 
Dark they stand o'er the vale below. 
And hide that heaven which yet shall show 
The thing their master's heart doth know. 

" Where the road looks to the castle steep, 
There are seven hill-clefts wide and deep : 
Six mine eyes can search as they list. 
But the seventh hollow is brimmed with mist ; 
If aught were there, it might not be wist." 



14 ROSE MARV. 

" Small hope, my girl, for a helm to hide 
In mists that cling to a wild moorside : 
Soon they melt with the wind and sun. 
And scarce would wait such deeds to be done 
God send their snares be the worst to shun." 

" Still the road winds ever anew 
As it hastens on towards Holycleugh ; 
And ever the great walls loom more near, 
Till the castle-shadow, steep and sheer, 
Drifts like a cloud, and the sky is clear." 

" Enough, my daughter," the mother said, 
And took to her breast the bending head ; 
" Rest, poor head, with my heart below. 
While love still lulls you as long ago : 
For all is learnt that we need to know. 

*^ Long the miles and many the hours 
From the castle-height to the abbey-towers ; 
But here the journey has no more dread ; 
Too thick with life is the whole road spread 
For murder's trembling foot to tread." 



ROSE MARY. 1 5 

She gazed on the Beryl-stone full fain 
Ere she wrapped it close in her robe again : 
The flickering shades were dusk and dun, 
And the lights throbbed faint in unison, 
Like a high heart when a race is run. 

As the globe slid to its silken gloom, 
Once more a music rained through the room ; 
Low it splashed like a sweet star-spray, 
And sobbed like tears at the heart of May, 
And died as laughter dies away. 

The lady held her breath for a space. 
And then she looked in her daughter's face : 
But wan Rose Mary had never heard ; 
Deep asleep like a sheltered bird 
She lay with the long spell minister'd. 

*' Ah ! and yet I must leave you, dear, 

For what you have seen your knight must hear. 

Within four days, by the help of God, 

He comes back safe to his heart's abode : 

Be sure he shall shun the valley-road." 



1 6 ROSE MARY, 

Rose Mary sank with a broken moan, 
And lay in the chair and slept alone, 
Weary, Hfeless, heavy as lead : 
Long it was ere she raised her head 
And rose up all discomforted. 

She searched her brain for a vanished thing. 
And clasped her brows, remembering ; 
Then knelt and lifted her eyes in awe. 
And sighed with a long sigh sweet to draw : — 
" Thank God, thank God, thank God I saw ! " 

The lady had left her as she lay. 
To seek the Knight of Heronhaye. 
But first she clomb by a secret stair, 
And knelt at a carven altar fair. 
And laid the precious Beryl there. 

Its girth was graved with a mystic rune 

In a tongue long dead 'neath sun and moon : 

A priest of the Holy Sepulchre 

Read that writing and did not err ; 

And her lord had told its sense to her. 



ROSE MARY. . 1/ 

She breathed the words in an undertone : — 
^^ None sees here but the pure alone y 
"And oh ! " she said, "what rose may be 
In Mary's bower more pure to see 
Than my own sweet maiden Rose Mary?" 



BERYL-SONG. 



We whose home is the Beryl, 
Fire-spirits of dread desire, 
Who entei-ed in ' 
By a secret sin, 
^Gainst whom all powers that strive with ours are sterile, ■ 
We cry, Woe to thee, mother ! 
What hast thou taught her, the girl thy daughter, 
That she and none other 
Should this dark morrow to her deadly sorroiv imperil 1 
What were her eyes 
But the fiend's own spies, 
O mother, 
And shall We not fee her, our proper prophet and seer ? 

2 



1 8 ROSE MARY. 

Go to her, mother. 
Even thou, yea thou and none other, 

Thou, from the Beryl : 
Her fee must thou take her. 
Her fee that We send, and make her. 
Even in this hour, her sin's unsheltered avower. 
Whose steed did neigh. 

Riderless, bridle-less, 
At her gate before it was day ? 
Lo ! where doth hover 
The soul of her lover 1 
She sealed his doom, she, she was the sworn approver, - 
Whose eyes were so wondrous wise, 
Yet blind, ah / blind to his peril ! 
For stole not We in 
Through a love-linked sin, 
'Gainst whom all powers at war with ours are sterile. 
Fire-spirits of dread desire, 
We whose home is the Beryl 1 



ROSE MARV. 19 



PART II. 

" Pale Rose Mary, what shall be done 

With a rose that Mary weeps upon? " 

*' Mother, let it faU from the tree. 

And never walk where the strewn leaves be 

Till winds have passed and the path is free." 

" Sad Rose Mary, what shall be done 
With a cankered flower beneath the sun? " 
" Mother, let it wait for the night ; 
Be sure its shame shall be out of sight 
Ere the moon pale or the east grow light." 

" Lost Rose Mary, what shall be done 
With a heart that is but a broken one ? " 
" Mother, let it lie where it must ; 
The blood was drained with the bitter thrust, 
And dust is all that sinks in the dust." 



20 ROSE MARY. 

" Poor Rose Mary, what shall I do, — 
I, your mother, that loved you? " 
" O my mother, and is love gone ? 
Then seek you another love anon : 
Who cares what shame shall lean upon ? " 

Low drooped trembling Rose Mary, 
Then up as though in a dream stood she. 
^' Come, my heart, it is time to go ; 
This is the hour that has whispered low 
When thy pulse quailed in the nights we know. 

" Yet O my heart, thy shame has a mate 
Who will not leave thee desolate. 
Shame for shame, yea and sin for sin : 
Yet peace at length may our poor souls win 
If love for love be found therein. 

" O thou who seek'st our shrift to-day," 
She cried, " O James of Heronhaye — 
Thy sin and mine was for love alone ; 
And oh ! in the sight of God 't is known 
How the heart has since made heavy moan. 



ROSE MARV. 21 

" Three days yet ! " she said to her heart ; 
" But then he comes, and we will not part. 
God, God be thanked that I still could see ! 
Oh ! he shall come back assuredly, 
But where, alas ! must he seek for me ? 

" O my heart, what road shall we roam 
Till my wedding-music fetch me home ? 
For love 's shut from us and bides afar, 
And scorn leans over the bitter bar 
And knows us now for the thing we are." 

Tall she stood with a cheek flushed high 
And a gaze to burn the heart-strings by. 
'T was the lightning- flash o'er sky and plain 
Ere laboring thunders heave the chain 
From the floodgates of the drowning rain. 

The mother looked on the daughter still 
As on a hurt thing that 's yet to kill. 
Then wildly at length the pent tears came ; 
The love swelled high with the swollen shame, 
And their hearts' tempest burst on them. 



22 ROSE MARY, 

Closely locked, they clung without speech, 
And the mirrored souls shook each to each, 
As the cloud-moon and the water-moon 
Shake face to face when the dim stars swoon 
In stormy bowers of the night's mid-noon. 

They swayed together, shuddering sore. 
Till the mother's heart could bear no more. 
'T was death to feel her o\vn breast shake 
Even to the very throb and ache 
Of the burdened heart she still must break. 

All her sobs ceased suddenly. 

And she sat straight up but scarce could see. 

" O daughter, where should my speech begin ? 

Your heart held fast its secret sin : 

How think you, child, that I read therein ? " 

" Ah me ! but I thought not how it came 

When your words showed that you knew my shame 

And now that you call me still your o\vn, 

I half forget you have ever known. 

Did you read my heart in the Beryl-stone ? " 



ROSE MARY. 23 

The lady answered her mournfully : — 
" The Beryl-stone has no voice for me : 
But when you charged its power to show 
The truth which none but the pure may know, 
Did naught speak once of a coming woe? " 

Her hand was close to her daughter's heart, 
And it felt the life-blood's sudden start : 
A quick deep breath did the damsel draw. 
Like the struck fawn in the oakenshaw : 
" O mother," she cried, " but still I saw ! " 

" O child, my child, why held you apart 
From my great love your hidden heart ? 
Said I not that all sin must chase 
From the spell's sphere the spirits of grace, 
And yield their rule to the evil race ? 

'' Ah ! would to God I had clearly told 
How strong those powers, accurst of old : 
Their heart is the ruined house of lies ; 
O girl, they can seal the sinful eyes, 
Or show the truth by contraries ! " 



24 ROSE MARY. 

The daughter sat as cold as a stone, 

And spoke no word but gazed alone, 

Nor moved, though her mother strove a space 

To clasp her round in a close embrace. 

Because she dared not see her face. 

" Oh ! " at last did the mother cry, 
" Be sure, as he loved you, so will I ! 
Ah ! still and dumb is the bride, I trow ; 
But cold and stark as the winter snow 
Is the bridegroom's heart, laid dead below ! 

" Daughter, daughter, remember you 

That cloud in the hills by Holycleugh ? 

'T was a Hell-screen hiding truth away : 

There, not i' the vale, the ambush lay. 

And thence was the dead borne home to-day." 

Deep the flood and heavy the shock 
When sea meets sea in the riven rock : 
But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea 
To the prisoned tide of doom set free 
In the breaking heart of Rose Mary. 



ROSE MARY. 25 

Once she sprang as the heifer springs 

With the wolfs teeth at its red heart-strings : 

First 't was fire in her breast and brain, 

And then scarce hers but the whole world's pain, 

As she gave one shriek and sank again. 

In the hair dark-waved the face lay white 

As the moon lies in the lap of night ; 

And as night through which no moon may dart 

Lies on a pool in the woods apart. 

So lay the swoon on the weary heart. 

The lady felt for the bosom's stir, 
And wildly kissed and called on her ; 
Then turned away with a quick footfall, 
And slid the secret door in the wall, 
And clomb the strait stair's interval. 

There above in the altar-cell 
A little fountain rose and fell : 
She set a flask to the water's flow, 
And, backward hurrying, sprinkled now 
The still cold breast and the pallid brow. 



26 ROSE MARY. 

Scarce cheek that warmed or breath on the air, 
Yet something told that Hfe was there. 
" Ah ! not with the heart the body dies ! " 
The lady moaned in a bitter wise ; 
Then wrung her hands and hid her eyes. 

" Alas ! and how may I meet again 

In the same poor eyes the self-same pain ? 

What help can I seek, such grief to guide ? 

Ah ! one alone might avail," she cried, — 

" The priest who prays at the dead man's side." 

The lady arose, and sped down all 
The winding stairs to the castle-hall. 
Long-known valley and wood and stream, 
As the loopholes passed, naught else did seem 
Than the torn threads of a broken dream. 

The hall was full of the castle-folk ; 
The women wept, but the men scarce spoke. 
As the lady crossed the rush-strewn floor, 
The throng fell backward, murmuring sore, 
And pressed outside round the open door. 



ROSE MARY. 2/ 

A stranger shadow hung on the hall 
Than the dark pomp of a funeral. 
'Mid common sights that were there alway, 
As 't were a chance of the passing day, 
On the ingle-bench the dead man lay. 

A priest who passed by Holycleugh 

The tidings brought when the day was new. 

He guided them who had fetched the dead ; 

And since that hour, unwearied, 

He knelt in prayer at the low bier's head. 

Word had gone to his own domain 

That in evil wise the knight was slain : 

Soon the spears must gather apace 

And the hunt be hard on the hunters' trace ; 

But all things yet lay still for a space. 

As the lady's hurried step drew near, 
The kneeling priest looked up to her. 
" Father, death is a grievous thing ; 
But oh ! the woe has a sharper sting 
That craves by me your ministering. 



28 ROSE MARY. 

*' Alas for the child that should have wed 
This noble knight here lying dead ! 
Dead in hope, with all blessed boon 
Of love thus rent from her heart ere noon, 
I left her laid in a heavy swoon. 

" O haste to the open bower-chamber 
That 's topmost as you mount the stair : 
Seek her, father, ere yet she wake ; 
Your words, not mine, be the first to slake 
This poor heart's fire, for Christ's sweet sake ! 

"God speed !" she said as the priest passed through, 

"And I ere long will be with you." 

Then low on the hearth her knees sank prone ; 

She signed all folk from the threshold- stone,. 

And gazed in the dead man's face alone. 

The fight for life found record yet 
In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set ; 
The wrath from the bent brow was not gone. 
And stark in the eyes the hate still shone 
Of that they last had looked upon. 



ROSE MARY. 29 

The blazoned coat was rent on his breast 
Where the golden field was goodliest ; 
But the shivered sword,, close-gripped, could tell 
That the blood shed round him where he fell 
Was not all his in the distant dell. 

The lady recked of the corpse no whit, 
But saw the soul and spoke to it ; 
A light there was in her steadfast eyes, — 
The fire of mortal tears and sighs 
That pity and love immortalize. 

" By thy death have I learnt to-day 

Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye ! 

Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine ; 

And haply God hath wrought for a sign 

By our blind deed this doom of thine. 

*' Thy shrift, alas ! thou wast not to win ; 
But may death shrive thy soul herein ! 
Full well do I know thy love should be 
Even yet — had life but stayed with thee — 
Our honor's strong security." 



30 ROSE MARV. 

She stooped, and said with a sob's low stir, — 
" Peace be thine, — but what peace for her? " 
But ere to the brow her hps were press'd, 
She marked, half-hid in the riven vest, 
A packet close to the dead man's breast. 

'Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail 
It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale. 
The clot clung round it, dull and dense. 
And a faintness seized her mortal sense 
As she reached her hand and drew it thence. 

'T was steeped in the heart's flood welling high 

From the heart it there had rested by : 

'T was glued to a broidered fragment gay, — 

A shred by spear-thrust rent away 

From the heron-wings of Heronhaye. 

She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne : — 
" Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine ! 
Ah me ! in this troth the hearts were twain. 
And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain. 
And when shall the other throb again? " 



ROSE MARY. 31 

She opened the packet heedfuUy ; 
The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be. 
She found but a folded paper there, 
And round it, twined with tenderest care, 
A long bright tress of golden hair. 

Even as she looked, she saw again 
That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain : 
It seemed a snake with a golden sheath 
Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth. 
And stung her daughter's heart to death. 

She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake 

As though indeed she had touched a snake ; 

And next she undid the paper's fold, 

But that too trembled in her hold. 

And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told. 

" My heart's sweet lord," ('twas thus she read,) 
"At length our love is garlanded. 
" At Holy Cross, within eight days' space, 
" I seek my shrift ; and the time and place 
" Shall fit thee too for thy soul's good grace. 



32 ROSE MARY. 

" From Holycleugh on the seventh day 
" My brother rides, and bides away : 
" And long or e'er he is back, mine own, 
" Afar where the face of fear 's unknown 
" We shall be safe with our love alone. 

" Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow, 

" I shear one tress for our holy vow. 

" As round these words these threads I wind, 

" So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined, 

" Says my lord's poor lady, Jocelind." 

She read it twice, with a brain in thrall. 
And then its echo told her all. 
O'er brows low-fall'n her hands she drew : — 
" O God ! " she said, as her hands fell too, — 
" The Warden's sister of Holycleugh ! " 

She rose upright with a long low moan. 

And stared in the dead man's face new-known. 

Had it lived indeed ? She scarce could tell : 

'T was a cloud where fiends had come to dwell, - 

A mask that hung on the gate of Hell. 



ROSE iMARY. 33 

She lifted the lock of gleaming hair 

And smote the lips and left it there. 

" Here 's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll ! 

Full well hath thy treason found its goal, 

O thou dead body and damned soul ! " 

She turned, sore dazed, for a voice was near. 
And she knew that some one called to her. 
On many a column fair and tall 
A high court ran round the castle-hall ; 
And thence it was that the priest did call. 

" I sought your child where you bade me go. 
And in rooms around and rooms below ; 
But where, alas ! may the maiden be ? 
Fear nought, — we shall find her speedily, — 
But come, come hither, and seek with me." 

She reached the stair like a lifelom thing, 
But hastened upward murmuring : — 
" Yea, Death 's is a face that 's fell to see ; 
But bitterer pang Life hoards for thee, 
Thou broken heart of Rose Mary ! " 
3 



34 ROSE' MARY, 



BERYL-SONG. 



We whose throne is the Beryl, 
Dire-gifted spirits of fire, 
Who for a twin 
Leash Sorrow to Sin, 
Who on nofloimr refrain to lour with peril, — 

We cry, — O desolate daughter I 
Thou and thy mother share newer shame with each other 
Than last nighfs slaughter. 
Awake and tremble, for our curses assemble! 
What more, that thou know'st not yet, — 
That life nor death shall forget ? 
No help from Heaven, — thy woes heart-riven are sterile ! 

O, once a maiden, 
With yet worse sorrow can any morrow be laden ? 
It waits for thee, 
It looms, it must be, 
O lost among women, — 
// comes and thou canst not flee. 
Amen to the omen. 
Says the voice of the Beryl. 



ROSE MARY. 35 

Thou sleep' st ? Awake, — 
What dar^st thou yet for his sake. 
Who each for other did God's own Future imperil! 
Dost dare to live 
'Mid the pangs each hour must give ? 
Nay, rather die, — 
With him thy lover 'neath HelVs cloud-cover to fly, — 
Hopeless, yet not apart. 
Cling heart to heart, 
And heat through the nether storm-eddying winds together ? 

Shall this be so ? 
There thou shall meet him, but may'st thou greet him ? 

ah no I 
He loves, but thee he hoped never more to see, — 
He sighed as he died, 
But with never a thought for thee. 
Alone I 
Alone, for ever alone, — 
Whose eyes were such wondrous spies for the fate foreshown I 
Lo ! have not We leashed the twin 
Of endless Sorrow to Sin, — 
Who on no flower refrain to lour with peril, — 
Dire-gifted' spirits of fire. 
We whose throne is the Beryl ? 



36 ROSE MARY. 



PART III. 

A SWOON that breaks is the whelming wave 
When help comes late but still can save. 
With all blind throes is the instant rife, — 
Hurtling clangor and clouds at strife, — 
The breath of death, but the kiss of life. 

The night lay deep on Rose Mary's heart, 
For her swoon was death's kind counterpart : 
The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul, — 
No hill-crown's heavenly aureole, 
But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal. 

Her senses gasped in the sudden air, 

And she looked around, but none was there. 

She felt the slackening frost distil 

Through her blood the last ooze dull and chill 

Her lids were dry and her lips were still. 



ROSE MARY. 37 

Her tears had flooded her heart again ; 
As after a long day's bitter rain, 
At dusk when the wet flower-cups shrink, 
The drops run in from the beaded brink, 
And all the close-shut petals drink. 

Again her sighs on her heart were rolled ; 
As the wind that long has swept the wold, — 
Whose moan was made with the moaning sea, — 
Beats out its breath in the last torn tree. 
And sinks at length in lethargy. 

She knew she had waded bosom-deep 
Along death's bank in the sedge of sleep : 
All else was lost to her clouded mind ; 
Nor, looking back, could she see defin'd 
O'er the dim dumb waste what lay behind. 

Slowly fades the sun from the wall 
Till day Hes dead on the sun-dial : 
And now in Rose Mary's lifted eye 
'T was shadow alone that made reply 
To the set face of the soul's dark sky. 



38 ROSE MARY. 

Yet still through her soul there wandered past 
Dread phantoms borne on a wailing blast, — 
Death and sorrow and sin and shame ; 
And, murmured still, to her lips there came ' 
Her mother's and her lover's name. 

How to ask, and what thing to know? 
She might not stay and she dared not go. 
From fires unseen these smoke-clouds curled ; 
But where did the hidden curse lie furled ? 
And how to seek through the weary world ? 

With toiling breath she rose from the floor 
And dragged her steps to an open door : 
'T was the secret panel standing wide, 
As the lady's hand had let it bide 
In hastening back to her daughter's side. 

She passed, but- reeled with a dizzy brain 
And smote the door which closed again. 
She stood within by the darkling stair. 
But her feet might mount more freely there, — 
'T was the open light most blinded her. 



ROSE MARY. 39 

Within her mind no wonder grew 

At the secret path she never knew : 

All ways alike were strange to her now, — 

One field bare-ridged from the spirit's plough, 

One thicket black with the cypress-bough. 

Once she thought that she heard her name ; 
And she paused, but knew not whence it came. 
Down the shadowed stair a faint ray fell 
That guided the weary footsteps well 
Till it led her up to the altar-cell. 

No change there was on Rose Mary's face 
As she leaned in the portal's narrow space : 
Still she stood by the pillar's stem. 
Hand and bosom and garment's hem. 
As the soul stands by at the requiem. 

The altar-cell was a dome low-lit, 

And a veil hung in the midst of it : 

At the pole-points of its circling girth 

Four symbols stood of the world's first birth, — 

Air and water and fire and earth. 



40 ROSE MARY. 

To the north, a fountain glittered free ; 
To the south, there glowed a red fruit-tree ; 
To the east, a lamp flamed high and fair ; 
To the west, a crystal casket rare 
Held fast a cloud of the fields of air. 

The painted walls were a mystic show 

Of time's ebb-tide and overflow ; 

His hoards long-locked and conquering key, 

His service-fires that in heaven be. 

And earth-wheels whirled perpetually. 

Rose Mary gazed from the open door 
As on idle things she cared not for, — 
The fleeting shapes of an empty tale ; 
Then stepped with a heedless visage pale, 
And lifted aside the altar-veil. 

The altar stood from its curved recess 
In a coiling serpent's life-likeness : 
Even such a serpent evermore 
Lies deep asleep at the world's dark core 
Till the last Voice shake the sea and shore. 



ROSE MARY. 41 

From the altar-cloth a book rose spread 
And tapers burned at the altar-head ; 
And there in the altar-midst alone, 
'Twixt wings of a sculptured beast unknown, 
Rose Mary saw the Beryl-stone. 

Firm it sat 'twixt the hollowed wings, 
As an orb sits in the hand of kings : 
And lo ! for that Foe whose curse far-flown 
Had bound her life with a burning zone, 
Rose Mary knew the Beryl-stone. 

Dread is the meteor's blazing sphere 
When the poles throb to its bHnd career ; 
But not with a light more grim and ghast 
Thereby is the future doom forecast. 
Than now this sight brought back the past. 

The hours and minutes seemed to whirr 
In a clanging swarm that deafened her ; 
They stung her heart to a writhing flame, 
And marshalled past in its glare they came, — 
Death and sorrow and sin and shame. 



42 ROSE MARY. 

Round the Beryl's sphere she saw them pass 
And mock her eyes from the fated glass : 
One by one in a fiery train 
The dead hours seemed to wax and wane, 
And burned till all was kno^vn again. 

From the drained heart's fount there rose no cry, 
There sprang no tears, for the source was dry. 
Held in the hand of some heavy law, 
Her eyes she might not once Avithdraw 
Nor shrink away from the thing she saw. 

Even as she gazed, through all her blood 
The flame was quenched in a coming flood : 
Out of the depth of the hollow gloom 
On her soul's bare sands she felt it boom, — 
The measured tide of a sea of doom. 

Three steps she took through the altar-gate, 
And her neck reared and her arms grew straight : 
The sinews clenched like a serpent's throe. 
And the face was white in the dark hair's flow, 
As her hate beheld what lay below. 



ROSE MARY. 43 

Dumb she stood in her malisons, — 
A silver statue tressed with bronze : 
As the fabled head by Perseus mown, 
It seemed in sooth that her gaze alone 
Had turned the carven shapes to stone. 

O'er the altar-sides on either hand 
There hung a dinted helm and brand : 
By strength thereof, 'neath the Sacred Sign, 
That bitter gift o'er the salt sea-brine 
Her father brought from Palestine. 

Rose Mary moved with a stem accord 
And reached her hand to her father's sword ; 
Nor did she stir her gaze one whit 
From the thing whereon her brows were knit ; 
But gazing still, she spoke to it. 

"O ye, three times accurst," she said, 
" By whom this stone is tenanted ! 
Lo ! here ye came by a strong sin's might ; 
Yet a sinner's hand that 's weak to smite 
Shall send you hence ere the day be night. 



44 ROSE MARY. 

" This hour a clear voice bade me know 
My hand shall work your overthrow : 
Another thing in mine ear it spake, — 
With the broken spell my life shall break. 
I thank Thee, God, for the dear death's sake ! 

" And he Thy heavenly minister 

Who swayed erewhile this spell-bound sphere, — 

My parting soul let him haste to greet, 

And none but he be guide for my feet 

To where Thy rest is made complete." 

Then deep she breathed, with a tender moan : - 

" My love, my lord, my only one ! 

Even as I held the cursed clue. 

When thee, through me, these foul ones slew, — 

By mine own deed shall they slay me too ! 

" Even while they speed to Hell, my love, 
Two hearts shall meet in Heaven above. 
Our shrift thou sought'st, but might'st not bring 
And oh ! for me 't is a blessed thing 
To work hereby our ransoming. 



ROSE MARY. 45 

" One were our hearts in joy and pain, 
And our souls e'en now grow one again. 
And O my love, if our souls are three, 
O thine and mine shall the third soul be, — 
One threefold love eternally." 

Her eyes were soft as she spoke apart. 

And the lif)s smiled to the broken heart : 

But the glance was dark and the forehead scored 

With the bitter frown of hate restored. 

As her two hands swung the heavy sword. 

Three steps back from her Foe she trod : — 
*' Love, for thy sake ! In Thy Name, O God ! " 
In the fair white hands small strength was shown ; 
Yet the blade flashed high and the edge fell prone, 
And she cleft the heart of the Beryl-stone. 

What living f!esh in the thunder-cloud 

Hath sat and felt heaven cry aloud ? 

Or known how the levin's pulse may beat ? 

Or wrapped the hour when the whirlwinds meet 

About its breast for a windings-sheet ? 



46 ROSE MARY. 

Who hath crouched at the world's deep heart 
While the earthquake rends its loins apart? 
Or walked far under the seething main 
While overhead the heavens ordain 
The tempest- towers of the hurricane ? 

Who hath seen or what ear hath heard 
The secret things unregister'd 
Of the place where all is past and done 
And tears and laughter sound as one 
In Hell's unhallowed unison ? 

Nay, is it writ how the fiends despair 
In earth and water and fire and air ? 
Even so no mortal tongue may tell 
How to the clang of the sword that fell 
The echoes shook the altar-cell. 

When all was still on the air again 
The Beryl-stone lay cleft in twain ; 
The veil was rent from the riven dome ; 
And every wind that 's winged to roam 
Might have the ruined place for home. 



ROSE MARY. 47 

The fountain no more glittered free ; 
The fruit hung dead on the leafless tree ; 
The flame of the lamp had ceased to flare; 
And the crystal casket shattered there 
Was emptied now of its cloud of air. 

And lo ! on the ground Rose Mary lay, 
With a cold brow like the snows ere May, 
With a cold breast like the earth till Spring, 
With such a smile as the June days bring 
When the year grows warm for harvesting. 

The death she had won might leave no trace 
On the soft sweet form and gentle face : 
In a gracious sleep she seemed to lie ; 
And over her head her hand on high 
Held fast the sword she triumphed by. 

'T was then a clear voice said in the room : -^ 

" Behold the end of the heavy doom. 

O come, — for thy bitter love's sake blest ; 

By a sweet path now thou joumeyest, 

And I will lead thee to thy rest. 



48 ROSE MARY. 

" Me thy sin by Heaven's sore ban 
Did chase erevvhile from the talisman : 
But to my heart, as a conquered home, 
In glory of strength thy footsteps come 
Who hast thus cast forth my foes therefrom. 

" Already thy heart remembereth 
No more his name thou sought'st in death : 
For under all deeps, all heights above, — 
So wide the gulf in the midst thereof, — 
Are Hell of Treason and Heaven of Love. 

" Thee, true soul, shall thy truth prefer 
To blessed Mary's rose-bower : 
Warmed and Ht is thy place afar 
With guerdon-fires of the sweet Love-star 
Where hearts of steadfast lovers are : — 

" Though naught for the poor corpse lying here 
Remain to-day but the cold white bier, 
But burial-chaunt and bended knee. 
But sighs and tears that heaviest be. 
But rent rose-flower and rosemary." 



ROSE MARY. 49 



BERYL-SONG. 



We, cast forth from the Beryl, 
Gyre-circling spirits of fire, 
Whose pangs begin 
With God's grace to sift, 
For whose spent powers the immortal hours are sterile, — 

Woe! must We behold this mother 
Find grace in her dead child'' s face, and doubt of nofte 

other 
But that perfect pardon, alas / hath assured her guerdofi? 

Woe I must We behold this daughter, 
Made clean from the soil of sin wherewith We had 
fraught her. 

Shake off a man^s blood like water ? 
Write up her story 
On the Gate of Heaven's glory, 
Whom there We behold so fair in shining apparel, 
And beneath her the rui7i 
Of our own undoing! 

Alas, the Beryl! 
We had for afoeman 
But one weak woman ; 
4 



50 ROSE MARY. 

In one dafs strife, 
Her hope fell dead from her life; 

And yet no iroft. 

Her soul to environ. 
Could this manslayer, this false soothsayer imperil ! 

Lo, where she bows 

In the Holy House I 
Who now shall dissever her soul from its joy for ever. 

While every ditty 

Of love aJid plentiful pity 

Fills the White City, 
And the floor of Heaven to her feet for ever is 
given ? 

Hark, a voice cries '^ Flee /" 
Woe I woe I what shelter have We, 

Whose pangs begin 

With God^s grace to sin, 
For whose spent powers the immortal hours are sterile, 

Gyre-circling spirits of fire, 

We, cast forth from the Beryl 1 



I 



THE WHITE SHIP. 



THE WHITE SHIP. 

Henry I. of England. — 25TH Nov., 1120. 

By none but me can the tale be told, 
The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold. 

(Lands are swayed by a King on a throne^ 
' T was a royal train put forth to sea, 
Yet the tale can be told by none but me. 

{The sea hath no King but God alone.) 

King Henry held it as life's whole gain 
That after his death his son should reign. 

' T was so in my youth I heard men say, 
And my old age calls it back to-day. 

King Henry of England's realm was he, 
And Henry Duke of Normandy. 



54 THE WHITE SHIP. 

The times had changed when on either coast 
" Clerkly Harry " was all his boast. 

Of ruthless strokes full many an one 

He had struck to crown himself and his son ; 

And his elder brother's eyes were gone. 

And when to the chase his court would crowd. 

The poor flung ploughshares on his road, 

And shrieked : " Our cry is from King to God ! " 

But all the chiefs of the English land 
Had knelt and kissed the Prince's hand. 

And next with his son he sailed to France 
To claim the Norman allegiance : 

And every baron in Normandy 
Had taken the oath of fealty. 

'T was sworn and sealed, and the day had come 
When the King and the Prince might journey home 

For Christmas cheer is to home hearts dear, 
And Christmas now was drawinsf near. 



THE WHITE SHIP. 55 

Stout Fitz-Stephen came to the King, — 
A pilot famous in seafaring ; 

And he held to the King, in all men's sight, 
A mark of gold for his tribute's right. 

" Liege Lord ! my father guided the ship 
From whose boat your father's foot did slip 
When he caught the English soil in his grip, 

" And cried : ' By this clasp I claim command 
O'er every rood of English land ! ' 

" He was borne to the realm you rule o'er now 
In that ship with the archer carved at her prow : 

" And thither I '11 bear, an' it be my due, 
Your father's son and his grandson too. 

*' The famed White Ship is mine in the bay ; 
From Harfleur's harbor she sails to-day, 

*' With masts fair-pennoned as Norman spears 
And with fifty well-tried mariners." 



56 THE WHITE SHIP. 

Quoth the King : " My ships are chosen each one, 
But I '11 not say nay to Stephen's son. 

" My son and daughter and fellowship 
Shall cross the water in the White Ship." 

The King set sail with the eve's south wind, 
And soon he left that coast behind. 

The Prince and all his, a princely show, 
Remained in the good White Ship to go. 

With noble knights and with ladies fair. 
With courtiers and sailors gathered there, 
Three hundred living souls we were ; 

And I Berold was the meanest hind 
In all that train to the Prince assign'd. 

The Prince was a lawless shameless youth ; 
From his father's loins he sprang without ruth : 

Eighteen years till then he had seen, 
And the devil's dues in him were eighteen. 



THE WHITE SHIP. 57 

And now he cried : " Bring wine from below ; 
Let the sailors revel ere yet they row : 

** Our speed shall o'ertake my father's flight 
Though we sail from the harbor at midnight." 

The rowers made good cheer without check ; 

The lords and ladies obeyed his beck ; 

The night was light, and they danced on the deck. 

But at midnight's stroke they cleared the bay, 
And the White Ship furrowed the water-way. 

The sails were set, and the oars kept tune 

To the double flight of the ship and the moon : 

Swifter and swifter the White Ship sped 

Till she flew as the spirit flies from the dead : 

As white as a lily glimmered she 
Like a ship's fair ghost upon the sea. 

And the Prince cried, " Friends, 't is the hour to sing ! 
Is a songbird's course so swift on the wing? " 



58 THE WHITE SHIP. 

And under the winter stars' still throng, 

From bro^vn throats, white throats, merry and strong, 

The knights and the ladies raised a song. 

A song, — nay, a shriek that rent the sky, 
That leaped o'er the deep ! — the grievous cry 
Of three hundred living that now must die. 

An instant shriek that sprang to the shock 
As the ship's keel felt the sunken rock. 

'T is said that afar — a shrill strange sigh — 
The King's ships heard it and knew not why. 

Pale Fitz-Stephen stood by the helm 

'Mid all those folk that the waves must whelm. 

A great King's heir for the waves to whelm, 
And the helpless pilot pale at the helm ! 

The ship was eager and sucked athirst. 

By the stealthy stab of the sharp reef pierc'd : 

And like the moil round a sinking cup, 
The waters against her crowded up. 



THE WHITE SHIP. 59 



A moment the pilot's senses spin, — 

The next he snatched the Prince 'mid the din, 

Cut the boat loose, and the youth leaped in. 

A few friends leaped with him, standing near. 
" Row ! the sea 's smooth and the night is clear ! 

"What ! none to be saved but these and I? " 
" Row, row as you 'd live ! All here must die ! " 

Out of the churn of the choking ship, 
Which the gulf grapples and the waves strip, 
They struck with the strained oars' flash and dip. 

'T was then o'er the splitting bulwarks' brim 
The Prince's sister screamed to him. 

He gazed aloft, still rowing apace, 

And through the whirled surf he knew her face. 

To the toppling decks clave one and all 
As a fly cleaves to a chamber-wall. 



6o THE WHITE SHIP. 

I Berold was clinging anear ; 

I prayed for myself and quaked with fear, 

But I saw his eyes as he looked at her. 

He knew her face and he heard her cry, 
And he said, " Put back ! she must not die ! " 

And back with the current's force they reel 
Like a leaf that 's drawn to a water-wheel. 

'Neath the ship's travail they scarce might float, 
* But he rose and stood in the rocking boat. 

Low the poor ship leaned on the tide : 
O'er the naked keel as she best might slide, 
The sister toiled to the brother's side. 

He reached an oar to her from below, 
And stiffened his arms to clutch her so. 

But now from the ship some spied the boat, 
And " Saved ! " was the cry from many a throat. 



THE WHITE SHIP. 6\ 

And down to the boat they leaped and fell : 

It turned as a bucket turns in a well, 

And nothing was there but the surge and swell. 

The Prince that was and the King to come, 
There in an instant gone to his doom, 

Despite of all England's bended knee 
And maugre the Norman fealty ! 

He was a Prince of lust and pride ; 

He showed no grace till the hour he died. 

When he should be King, he oft would vow, 
He *d yoke the peasant to his own plough. 
O'er him the ships score their furrows now. 

God only knows where his soul did wake, 
But I saw him die for his sister's sake. 

By none but me can the tale be told. 
The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold. 

{Lands are swayed by a King on a throne.) 



62 THE WHITE SHIP. 

'T was a royal train put forth to sea, 
Yet the tale can be told by none but me. 
{The sea hath no King hit God alone.) 

And now the end came o'er the waters' womb 
Like the last great Day that 's yet to come. 

With prayers in vain and curses in vain, 
The White Ship sundered on the mid-main : 

And what were men and what was a ship 
Were toys and splinters in the sea's grip. 

I Berold was down in the sea \ 

And passing strange though the thing may be, 

Of dreams then known I remember me. 

BHthe is the shout on Harfleur's strand 
When morning lights the sails to land : 

And blithe is Honfleur's echoing gloam 
When mothers call the children home : 

And high do the bells of Rouen beat 

When the Body of Christ goes down the street. 



THE WHITE SHIP. 63 

These things and the like were heard and shown 
In a moment's trance 'neath the sea alone ; 

And when I rose, 't was the sea did seem, 
And not these things, to be all a dream. 

The ship was gone and the crowd was gone, 
And the deep shuddered and the moon shone : 

And in a strait grasp my arms did span 

The mainyard rent from the mast where it ran ; 

And on it with me was another man. 

Where lands were none 'neath the dim sea-sky. 
We told our names, that man and I. 

" O I am Godefroy de I'Aigle hight, 
And son I am to a belted knight." 

" And I am Berold the butcher's son 
Who slays the beasts in Rouen town." 

Then cried we upon God's name, as we 
Did drift on the bitter winter sea. 



64 THE WHITE SHIP. 

But lo ! a third man rose o'er the wave, 

And we said, " Thank God ! us three may He save ! " 

He clutched to the yard with panting stare, 
And we looked and knew Fitz-Stephen there. 

He clung, and "What of the Prince?" quoth he. 
"Lost, lost ! " we cried. He cried, "Woe on me !" 
And loosed his hold and sank through the sea. 

And soul with soul again in that space 
We two were together face to face : 

And each knew each, as the moments sped, 
Less for one living than for one dead : 

And every still star overhead 

Seemed an eye that knew we were but dead. 

And the hours passed ; till the noble's son 

Sighed, " God be thy help ! my strength 's foredone ! 

" O farewell, friend, for I can no more ! " 

"Christ take thee ! " I moaned ; and his life was o'er. 



\ 



THE WHITE SHIP. 65 

Three hundred souls were all lost but one, 
And I drifted over the sea alone. 

At last the morning rose on the sea 

Like an angel's wing that beat tow'rds me. 

Sore numbed I was in my sheepskin coat ; 
Half dead I hung, and might nothing note, 
Till I woke sun-warmed in a fisher-boat. 

The sun was high o'er the eastern brim 
As I praised God and gave thanks to Him. 

That day I told my tale to a priest, 

Who charged me, till the shrift were releas'd, 

That I should keep it in mine own breast. 

And with the priest I thence did fare 
To King Henry's court at Winchester. 

We spoke with the King's high chamberlain, 
And he wept and mourned again and again, 
As if his own son had been slain : 
5 



66 THE WHITE SHIP. 

And round us ever there crowded fast 
Great men with faces all aghast : 

And who so bold that might tell the thing 
Which now they knew to their lord the King ? 
Much woe I learnt in their communing. 

The King had watched with a heart sore stirred 
For two whole days, and this was the third : 

And still to all his court would he say, 
"What keeps my son so long away? " 

And they said : " The ports lie far and wide 
That skirt the swell of the English tide ; 

" And England's cliffs are not more white 
Than her women are, and scarce so light 
Her skies as their eyes are blue and bright ; 

" And in some port that he reached from France 
The Prince has lingered for his pleasaunce." 

But once the King asked : " W^hat distant cry 
Was that we heard 'twixt the sea and sky? " 



THE WHITE SHIP. 6/ 

And one said : " With suchlike shouts, pardie ! 
Do the fishers fling their nets at sea." 

And one : " Who knows not the shrieking quest 
When the sea-mew misses its young from the nest? " 

'Twas thus till now they had soothed his dread, 
Albeit they knew not what they said : 

But who should speak to-day of the thing 
That all knew there except the King? 

Then pondering much they found a way. 
And met round the King's high seat that day : 

And the King sat with a heart sore stirred, 
And seldom he spoke and seldom heard. 

'T was then through the hall the King was 'ware 
Of a little boy with golden hair, 

As bright as the golden poppy is 

That the beach breeds for the surf to kiss : 



68 THE WHITE SHIP. 

Yet pale his cheek as the thorn in Spring, 
And his garb black like the raven's wing. 

Nothing heard but his foot through the hall, 
For now the lords were silent all. 

And the King wondered, and said, " Alack ! 
Who sends me a fair boy dressed in black ? 

" Why, sweet heart, do you pace through the hall 
As though my court were a funeral? " 

Then lowly knelt the child at the dais, 
And looked up weeping in the King's face. 

" O wherefore black, O King, ye may say, 
For white is the hue of death to-day. 

" Your son and all his fellowship 

Lie low in the sea with the White Ship." 

King Henry fell as a man struck dead ; 
And speechless still he stared from his bed 
When to him next day my rede I read. 



THE WHITE SHIP. 69 

There 's many an hour must needs beguile 
A King's high heart that he should smile, — 

Full many a lordly hour, full fain 

Of his realm's rule and pride of his reign : — 

But this King never smiled again. 

By none but me can the tale be told, 
The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold. 

{Lajids are swayed by a King on a throne.') 
'T was a royal train put forth to sea. 
Yet the tale can be told by none but me. 

{The sea hath no King but- God alone.) 



THE KING'S TRAGEDY. 



NOTE. 

Tradition says that Catherine Douglas, in honor of her heroic 
act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderers 
of James the First of Scots, received popularly the name of 
" Barlass." This name remains to her descendants, the Barlas 
family, in Scotland, who bear for their crest a broken arm. She 
married Alexander Lovell of Bolunnie. 

A few stanzas from King James's lovely poem, known as The 
King's Quhair, are quoted in the course of this ballad. The writer 
must express regret for the necessity which has compelled him to 
shorten the ten-syllabled lines to eight syllables, in order that they 
might harmonize with the ballad metre. 



THE KING'S TRAGEDY. 

James I. of Scots. — 20th February, 1437. 



I Catherine am a Douglas bom, 

A name to all Scots dear ; 
And Kate Barlass they Ve called me now 

Through many a waning year. 

This old arm 's withered now. 'T was once 

Most deft 'mong maidens all 
To rein the steed, to wing the shaft, 

To smite the palm-play ball. 

In hall adown the close-linked dance 
It has shone most white and fair ; 
It has been the rest for a true lord's head, 
And many a sweet babe's nursing-bed, 
And the bar to a King's chambere. 



74 THE KINGS TRAGEDY, 

Aye, lasses, draw round Kate Barlass, 

And hark with bated breath 
How good King James, King Robert's son. 

Was foully done to death. 

Through all the days of his gallant youth 

The princely James was pent, 
By his friends at first and then by his foes, 

In long imprisonment. 

For the elder Prince, the kingdom's heir. 

By treason's murderous brood 
Was slain ; and the father quaked for the child 

With the royal mortal blood. 

I' the Bass Rock fort, by his father's care. 

Was his childhood's life assured ; 
And Henry the subtle Bolingbroke, 
Proud England's King, 'neath the southron yoke 
His youth for long years immured. 

Yet in all things meet for a kingly man 

Himself did he approve ; 
And the nightingale through his prison -wall 

Taught him both lore and love. 






THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 75 

For once, when the bird's song drew him close 

To the opened window-pane, 
In her bowers beneath a lady stood, 
A light of life to his sorrowful mood, 

Like a lily amid the rain. 

And for her sake, to the sweet bird's note. 

He framed a sweeter Song, 
More sweet than ever a poet's heart 

Gave yet to the English tongue. 

She was a lady of royal blood ; 

And when, past sorrow and teen, 
He stood where still through his crownless years 

His Scotish realm had been. 
At Scone were the happy lovers crowned, 

A heart-wed King and Queen. 

But the bird may fall from the bough of youth, 

And song be turned to moan, • 
And Love's storm-cloud be the shadow of Hate, 
When the tempest-waves of a troubled State 

Are beating against a throne. 



76 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

Yet well they loved ; and the god of Love, 
Whom well the King had sung, 

Might find on the earth no tnier hearts 
His lowliest swains among. 

From the days when first she rode abroad 
With Scotish maids in her train, 

I Catherine Douglas won the trust 
Of my mistress sweet Queen Jane. 

And oft she sighed, "To be 'bom a King ! " 

And oft along the way 
When she saw the homely lovers pass 

She has said, '>' Alack the day ! " 

Years waned, — the loving and toiling years ; 

Till England's wrong renewed 
Drove James, by outrage cast on his crown, 

To the open field of feud. 

'T was when the King and his host were met 
At the leaguer of Roxbro' hold. 

The Queen o' the sudden sought his camp 
With a tale of dread to be told. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 77 

And she showed him a secret letter writ 

That spoke of treasonous strife, 
And how a band of his noblest lords 

Were sworn to take his life. 

" And it may be here or it may be there, 
In the camp or the court," she said : 

" But for my sake come to your people's arms 
And guard your royal head." 

Quoth he, *^ 'T is the fifteenth day of the siege. 

And the castle 's nigh to )aeld." 
'^ O face your foes on your throne," she cried, 

" And show the power you wield ; 
And under your Scotish people's love 

You shall sit as under your shield." 

At the fair Queen's side I stood that day 

When he bade them raise the siege. 
And back to his Court he sped to know 

How the lords would meet their Liege. 

But when he summoned his Parliament, 
The louring brows hung round. 



78 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

Like clouds that circle the mountain-head 
Ere the first low thunders sound. 

For he had tamed the nobles' lust 
And curbed their power and pride, 

And reached out an arm to right the poor 
Through Scotland far and wide \ 

And many a lordly wrong-doer 
By the headsman's axe had died. 

'Twas then upspoke Sir Robert Graeme, 
The bold o'ermastering man : — 

" O King, in the name of your Three Estates 
I set you under their ban ! 

" For, as your lords made oath to you 

Of service and fealty, 
Even in like wise you pledged your oath 

Their faithful sire to be : — ^ 

" Yet all we here that are nobly sprung 
Have mourned dear kith and kin 

Since first for the Scotish Barons' curse 
Did your bloody rule begin." 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 79 

With that he laid his hands on his King : — 

" Is this not so, my lords ? " 
But of all who had sworn to league with him 

Not one spake back to his words. 

Quoth the King : — " Thou speak'st but for one Estate, 

Nor doth it avow thy gage. 
Let my Hege lords hale this traitor hence 1 " 

The Graeme fired dark with rage : — 
" Who works for lesser men than himself, 

He earns but a witless wage ! " 

But soon from the dungeon where he lay 

He won by privy plots, 
And forth he fled with a price on his head 

To the country of the Wild Scots. 

And word there came from Sir Robert Graeme 

To the King at Edinbro' : — 
" No Liege of mine thou art ; but I see 
From this day forth alone in thee 

God's creature, my mortal foe. 



80 THE KING'S TRAGEDY, 

" Through thee are my wife and children lost, 

My heritage and lands ; 
And when my God shall show me a way, 
Thyself my mortal foe will I slay 

With these my proper hands." 

Against the coming of Christmastide 

That year the King bade call 
I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth 

A solemn festival. 

And we of his household rode with him 

In a close-ranked company ; 
But not till the sun had sunk from his tlirone 

Did we reach the Scotish Sea. 

That eve was clenched for a boding storm, 
'Neath a toilsome moon half seen ; 

The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high ; 

And where there was a line of the sky, 
Wild wings loomed dark between. 

And on a rock of the black beach-side. 
By the veiled moon dimly lit, 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 8 1 

There was something seemed to heave with life 
As the King drew nigh to it. 

And was it only the tossing furze 

Or brake of the waste sea-wold ? 
Or was it an eagle bent to the blast ? 
When near we came, we knew it at last 

For a woman tattered and old. 

But it seemed as though by a fire within 

Her writhen limbs were wrung ; 
And as soon as the King was close to her, 

She stood up gaunt and strong. 

'T was then the moon sailed clear of the rack 

On high in her hollow dome ; 
And still as aloft with hoary crest 

Each clamorous wave rang home, 
Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed 

Amid the champing foam. 

And the woman held his eyes with her eyes : — 

" O King, thou art come at last ; 
But thy wraith has haunted the Scotish Sea 

To my sight for four years past. 



82 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

" Four years it is since first I met, 
'Tw-ixt the Duchray and the Dhu, 

A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud. 
And that shape for thine I knew. 

** A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle 

I saw thee pass in the breeze. 
With the cerecloth risen above thy feet 

And wound about thy knees. 

" And yet a year, in the Links of Forth, 

As a wanderer without rest, 
Thou cam'st with both thine arms i' the shroud 

That clung high up thy breast. 

" And in this hour I find thee here, " 

And well mine eyes may note 
That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast 

And risen around thy throat. 

" And when I meet thee again, O King, 

That of death hast such sore drouth, — 
Except thou turn again on this shore, — 
The winding-sheet shall have moved once more 
And covered thine eyes and mouth. 



THE KING'S TRAGEDY, ^l 

" O King, whom poor men bless for their King, 

Of thy fate be not so fain ; 
But these my words for God's message take, 
And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake 

Who rides beside thy rein ! " 

While the woman spoke, the King's horse reared 

As if it would breast the sea. 
And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale 

The voice die dolorously. 

When the woman ceased, the steed was still, 

But the King gazed on her yet, 
And in silence save for the wail of the sea 

His eyes and her eyes met. 

At last he said : — " God's ways are His own ; 

Man is but shadow and dust. 
Last night I prayed by His altar- stone ; 
To-night I wend to the Feast of His Son ; 

And in Him I set my trust. 

" I have held my people in sacred charge, 
And have not feared the sting 



84 THE KING'S TRAGEDY. 

Of proud men's hate, — to His will resign'd 
Who has but one same death for a hind 

And one same death for a King. 

» 

" And if God in His wisdom have brought close 

The day when I must die, 
That day by water or fire or air 
My feet shall fall in the destined snare 

Wherever my road may lie.. 

" What man can say but the Fiend hath set 

Thy sorcery on my path. 
My heart with the fear of death to fill, 
And turn me against God's very will 

To sink in His burning wrath? " 

The woman stood as the train rode past, 

And moved nor limb nor eye j 
And when we were shipped, we saw her there 

Still standing against the sky. 

As the ship made way, the moon once more 

Sank slow in her rising pall ; 
And I thought of the shrouded wraith of the King, 

And I said, "The Heavens know all." 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 85 

And now, ye lasses, must ye hear 

How my name is Kate Barlass : — 
But a little thing, when all the tale 

Is told of the weary mass 
Of crime and woe which in Scotland's realm 

God's will let come to pass. 

'T was in the Charterhouse of Perth 

That the King and all his Court 
Were met, the Christmas Feast being done, 

For solace and disport. 

'T was a wind- wild eve in February, 

And against the casement-pane 
The branches smote like summoning hands 

And muttered the driving rain. 

And when the wind swooped over the lift 

And made the whole heaven frown. 
It seemed a grip was laid on the walls 

To tug the housetop down. 

And the Queen was there, more stately fair 
Than a lily in garden set ; 



86 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

And the King was loth to stir from her side ; 
For as on the day when she was his bride, 
Even so he loved her yet. 

And the Earl of Athole, the King's false friend, 

Sat with him at the board ; 
And Robert Stuart the chamberlain 

Who had sold his sovereign Lord. 

Yet the traitor Christopher Chaumber there 

Would fain have told him all, 
And vainly four times that night he strove 

To reach the King through the hall. 

But the wine is bright at the goblet's brim 

Though the poison lurk beneath ; 
And the apples still are red on the tree 
Within whose shade may the adder be 
That shall turn thy life to death. 

There was a knight of the King's fast friends 
Whom he called the King of Love ; 

And to such bright cheer and courtesy 
That name might best behove. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 8/ 

And the King and Queen both loved him well 

For his gentle knightliness ; 
And with him the King, as that eve wore on, 

Was playing at the chess. 

And the King said, (for he thought to jest 

And soothe the Queen thereby ;) — 
" In a book 't is writ that this same year 

A King shall in Scotland die. 

" And I have pondered the matter o'er, 

And this have I found, Sir Hugh, — 
There are but two Kings on Scotish ground, 

And those Kings are I and you. 

" And I have a wife and a newborn heir, 

And you are yourself alone ; 
So stand you stark at my side with me 

To guard our double throne. 

" For here sit I and my wife and child. 

As well your heart shall approve, 
In full surrender and soothfastness. 

Beneath your Kingdom of Love." 



88 THE KINGS TRAGEDY, 

And the Knight laughed, and the Queen too smiled ; 

But I knew her heavy thought, 
And I strove to find in the good King's jest 

What cheer might thence be wrought. 

And I said, " My Liege, for the Queen's dear love 

Now sing the song that of old 
You made, when a captive Prince you lay, 
And the nightingale sang sweet on the spray. 

In Windsor's castle-hold." 



Then he smiled the smile I knew so well 
When he thought to please the Queen ; 

The smile which under all bitter frowns 
Of hate that rose between, 

For ever dwelt at the poet's heart 
Like the bird of love unseen. 



And he kissed her hand and took his harp, 

And the music sweetly rang ; 
And when the song burst forth, it seemed 

'T was the nightingale that sang. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 89 

" Worship, ye lovers, on this May : 
Of bliss your kalends are begun : 

Sing with us, Away, Whiter, away I 

Come, Summer, the sweet season and sun I 
Awake for shame, — your heaven is won, — 

And amorously your heads lift all: 

Thank Love, that you to his grace doth call P^ 

But when he bent to the Queen, and sang 

The speech whose praise was hers, 
It seemed his voice was the voice of the Spring 

And the voice of the bygone years. 

" The fairest and the freshest flower 
That ever I saw before that hour, 
The which 0' the sudden made to start 
The blood of my body to my heart. 

* * * * * 

Ah sweet, are ye a worldly creature 
Or heavenly thing inform of nature 1 " 

And the song was long, and richly stored 
With wonder and beauteous thinf 



igs; 



90 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

And the harp was tuned to every change 

Of minstrel ministerings ; 
But when he spoke of the Queen at the last. 

Its strings were his o\vn heart-strings. 

" Unworthy hut only of her grace, 

Upon Love's rock that V easy and sure. 

In guerdon of all my love's space 
She took me her humble creature. 
Thus fell my blissful aventure 

In youth of love that from day to day 

Flowereth aye new^ and further I say. 

" To reckon all the circumstance 

As it happed when lessen gan my sore, 

Of my rancor and wofiil chance, 

It were too long, — / have done therefor. 
And of this flower I say no more 

But unto my help her heart hath tended 

And even from death her man defended." 

" Aye, even from death/' to myself I said ; 

For I thought of the day when she 
Had borne him the news, at Roxbro' siege, 

Of the fell confederacy. 



THE KING'S TRAGEDY. 91 

But Death even then took aim as he sang 

With an arrow deadly bright ; 
And the grinning skull lurked grimly aloof, 
And the wings were spread far over the roof 

More dark than the winter night. 

Yet truly along the amorous song 

Of Love's high pomp and state, 
There were words of Fortune's trackless doom 

And the dreadful face of Fate. 

And oft have I heard again in dreams 

The voice of dire appeal 
In which the King then sang of the pit 

That is under Fortune's wheel. 

" Afid tmder the wheel beheld I there 

An ugly Pit as deep as hell, 
That to behold I quaked for fear : 

And this I heard, that who therein fell 

Came no more up, tidings to tell : 
Whereaty astound of the fearful sight, 
I wist not what to do for fright ^ 



92 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

And oft has my thought called up again 

These words of the changeful song : — 
" Wist thou thy pai?i and thy travail 
To come, well mighfst thou weep and wail f^^ 
And our wail, O God ! is long. 

But the song's end was all of his love ; 

And well his heart was grac'd 
With her smiling lips and her tear-bright eyes 

As his arm went round her waist. 

And on the swell of her long fair throat 

Close clung the necklet- chain 
As he bent her pearl-tir'd head aside, 
And in the warmth of his love and pride 

He kissed her lips full fain. 

And her true face was a rosy red, 

The very red of the rose 
That, couched on the happy garden-bed, 

In the summer sunlight glows. 

And all the wondrous things of love 
That sang so sweet through the song 

Were in the look that met in their eyes, 
And the look was deep and long. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 93 

'1' was then a knock came at the outer gate, 

And the usher sought the King. 
" The woman you met by the Scotish Sea, 

My Liege, would tell you a thing ; 
And she says that her present need for speech 

Will bear no gainsaying." 

And the King said : " The hour is late ; 

To-morrow will serve, I ween." 
Then he charged the usher strictly, and said : 

" No word of this to the Queen." 

But the usher came again to the King. 

" Shall I call her back? " quoth he : 
'■'■ For as she went on her way, she cried, 

' Woe ! Woe ! then the thing must be ! ' " 

And the King paused, but he did not speak. 

Then he called for the Voidee-cup : 
And as we heard the twelfth hour strike, 
There by true lips and false hps alike 

Was the draught of trust drained up. 

So with reverence meet to King and Queen, 
To bed went all from the board ; 



94 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

And the last to leave of the courtly train 
Was Robert Stuart the chamberlain 
Who had sold his sovereign lord. 

And all the locks of the chamber-door 

Had the traitor riven and brast ; 
And that Fate might win sure way from afar, 
He had drawn out every bolt and bar 
That made the entrance fast. 

And now at midnight he stole his way 
To the moat of the outer wall, 

And laid strong hurdles closely across 
Where the traitors' tread should fall. 

But we that were the Queen's bower-maids 

Alone were left behind ; 
And with heed we drew the curtains close 
- Against the winter wind. 

And now that all was still through the hall, 
More clearly we heard the rain 

That clamored ever against the glass 
And the boughs that beat on the pane. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 95 

But the fire was bright in the ingle-nook, 

And through empty space around 
The shadows cast on the arras 'd wall 
'Mid the pictured kings stood sudden and tall 

Like spectres sprung from the ground. 

And the bed was dight in a deep alcove ; 

And as he stood by the fire 
The king was still in talk with the Queen 

While he doffed his goodly attire. 

And the song had brought the image back 

Of many a bygone year ; 
And many a loving word they said 
With hand in hand and head laid to head ; 

And none of us went anear. 

But Love was weeping outside the house, 

A child in the piteous rain ; 
And as he watched the arrow of Death, 
He wailed for his own shafts close in the sheath 

That never should fly again. 

And now beneath the window arose 
A wild voice suddenly : 



96 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

And the King reared straight, but the Queen fell back 

As for bitter dule to dree ; 
And all of us knew the woman's voice 

Who spoke by the Scotish Sea. 

" O King," she cried, " in an evil hour 

They drove me from thy gate ; 
And yet my voice must rise to thine ears ; 

But alas ! it comes too late ! 

" Last night at mid-watch, by Aberdour, 
When the moon was dead in the skies, 

O King, in a death-light of thine own 
I saw thy shape arise. 

" And in full season, as erst I said. 

The doom had gained its growth ; 
And the shroud had risen above thy neck 

And covered thine eyes and mouth. 

" And no moon woke, but the pale dawn broke. 

And still thy soul stood there ; 
And I thought its silence cried to my soul 

As the first rays crowned its hair. 






THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 97 

" Since then have I journeyed fast and fain 

In very despite of Fate, 
Lest Hope might still be found in God's will : 

But they drove me from thy gate. 

'' For every man on God's ground, O King, 

His death grows up from his birth 
In a shadow-plant perpetually ; 

And thine towers high, a black yew-tree, 

O'er the Charterhouse of Perth ! " 

That room was built far out from the house ; 

And none but we in the room 
Might hear the voice that rose beneath, 

Nor the tread of the coming doom. 

For now there came a torchlight-glare. 

And a clang of arms there came ; 
And not a soul in that space but thought 

Of the foe Sir Robert Graeme. 

Yea, from the country of the Wild Scots, 

O'er mountain, valley, and glen. 
He had brought with him in murderous league 

Three hundred armed men. 

7 



qS the kings tragedy. 

The King knew all in an instant's flash , 

And like a King did he stand ; 
But there was no armor in all the room, 

Nor weapon lay to his hand. 

And all we women flew to the door 
And thought to have made it fast ; 

But the bolts were gone and the bars were gone 
And the locks were riven and brast. 

And he caught the pale pale Queen in his arms 

As the iron footsteps fell, — 
Then loosed her, standing alone, and said, 

" Our bliss was our farewell ! " 

And 'twixt his lips he murmured a prayer, 

And he crossed his brow and breast ; 
And proudly in royal hardihood 
Even so with folded arms he stood, — 
The prize of the bloody quest. 

Then on me leaped the Queen like a deer : — 
" O Catherine, help ! " she cried. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 99 

And low at his feet we clasped his knees 

Together side by side. 
" Oh ! even a King, for his people's sake, 

From treasonous death must hide ! " 

" For her sake most ! " I cried, and I marked 
The pang that my words could wring. 

And the iron tongs from the chimney-nook 
I snatched and held to the King : — 

" Wrench up the plank ! and the vault beneath 
Shall yield safe harboring." 

With brows low-bent, from my eager hand 

The heavy heft did he take ; 
And the plank at his feet he wrenched and tore ; 
And as he frowned through the open floor, 

Again I said, " For her sake ! " 

Then he cried to the Queen, " God's will be done ! " 
For her hands were clasped in prayer. 

And down he sprang to the inner crypt ; 

And straight we closed the plank he had ripp'd 
And toiled to smoothe it fair. 



100 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

(Alas ! in that vault a gap once was 

Where thro' the King might have fled : 
But three days since close-walled had it been 
By his will ; for the baU would roll therein 
When without at the palm he play'd.) 

Then the Queen cried, " Catherine, keep the door, 

And I to this will suffice ! " 
At her word I rose all dazed to my feet, 

And my heart was fire and ice. 

And louder ever the voices grew, 

And the tramp of men in mail ; 
Until to my brain it seemed to be 
As though I tossed on a ship at sea 

In the teeth of a crashing gale. 

Then back I flew to the rest ; and hard 

We strove with sinews knit 
To force the table against the door ; 

But we might not compass it. 

Then my wild gaze sped far down the hall 
To the place of the hearthstone-sill ; 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. lOI 

And the Queen bent ever above the floor, 
For the plank was rising still. 

And now the rush was heard on the stair, 
And " God, what help ? " was our cry. 

And was I frenzied or was I bold ? 

I looked at each empty stanchion-hold. 
And no bar but my arm had I ! 

Like iron felt my arm, as through 

The staple I made it pass : — 
Alack ! it was flesh and bone — no more ! 
'T was Catherine Douglas sprang to the door, 

But I fell back Kate Barlass. 

With that they all thronged into the hall. 

Half dim to my failing ken ; 
And the space that was but a void before 

Was a crowd of wrathful men. 

Behind the door I had fall'n and lay, 

Yet my sense was wildly aware, 
And for all the pain of my shattered arm 

I never fainted there. 



102 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

Even as I fell, my eyes were cast 
Where the King leaped down to the pit ; 

And lo ! the plank was smooth in its place, 
And the Queen stood far from it. 

And under the litters and through the bed 

And within the presses all 
The traitors sought for the King, and pierced 

The arras around the wall. 

And through the chamber they ramped and stormed 

Like lions loose in the lair, 
And scarce could trust to their very eyes, — 

For behold ! no King was there. 

Then one of them seized the Queen, and cried, — 

" Now tell us, where is thy lord? " 
And he held the sharp point over her heart : 
She drooped not her eyes nor did she start, 

But she answered never a word. 

Then the sword half pierced the true true breast : 
But it was the Graeme's own son 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 103 

Cried, " This is a woman, — we seek a man ! " 

And away from her girdle-zone 
He struck the point of the murderous steel ; 

And that foul deed was not done. 

And forth flowed all the throng like a sea, 

And 't was empty space once more ; 
And my eyes sought out the wounded Queen 

As I lay behind the door. 

And I said : " Dear Lady, leave me here, 

For I cannot help you now ; 
But fly while you may, and none shall reck 

Of my place here lying low." 

And she said, " My Catherine, God help thee ! " 

Then she looked to the distant floor, 
And clasping her hands, " O God help him,^^ 

She sobbed, " for we can no more ! " 

But God He knows what help may mean, 

If it mean to live or to die ; 
And what sore sorrow and mighty moan 
On earth it may cost ere yet a throne 

Be filled in His house on high. 



I04 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

And now the ladies fled with the Queen ; 

And thorough the open door 
The night-wind wailed round the empty room 

And the rushes shook on the floor. 

And the bed drooped low in the dark recess 

Whence the arras was rent away ; 
And the firelight still shone over the space 

Where our hidden secret lay. 

And the rain had ceased, and the moonbeams lit 

The window high in the wall, — 
Bright beams that on the plank that I knew 

Through the painted pane did fall 
And gleamed with the splendor of Scotland's crown 

And shield armorial. 

But then a great wind swept up the skies, 

And the climbing moon fell back ; 
And the royal blazon fled from the floor, 

And nought remained on its track ; 
And high in the darkened window-pane 

The shield and the crown were black. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 105 

And what I say next I partly saw 

And partly I heard in sooth, 
And partly since from the murderers' lips 

The torture wrung the truth. 

For now again came the armed tread, 

And fast through the hall it fell ; 
But the throng was less ; and ere I saw, 

By the voice without I could tell 
That Robert Stuart had come with them 

Who knew that chamber well. 

And over the space the Graeme strode dark 

With his mantle round him flung ; 
And in his eye was a flaming light 

But not a word on his tongue. 

And Stuart held a torch to the floor, 

And he found the thing he sought ; 
And they slashed the plank away with their swords j 

And O God ! I fainted not ! 

And the traitor held his torch in the gap, 
All smoking and smouldering ; 



lo6 THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 

And through the vapor and fire, beneath 

In the dark crypt's narrow ring, 
With a shout that pealed to the room's high roof 

They saw their naked King. 

Half naked he stood, but stood as one 

Who yet could do and dare : 
With the crown, the King was stript away, — 
The Knight was reft of his battle-array, — 

But still the Man was there. 

From the rout then stepped a villain forth, — 

Sir John Hall was his name ; 
With a knife unsheathed he leapt to the vault 

Beneath the torchlight-flame. 

Of his person and stature was the King 

A man right manly strong. 
And mightily by the shoulder-blades 

His foe to his feet he flung. 

Then the traitor's brother. Sir Thomas Hall, 

Sprang down to work his worst ; 
And the King caught the second man by the neck 

And flung him above the first. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 10/ 

And he smote and trampled them under him \ 

And a long month thence they bare 
All black their throats with the grip of his hands 

When the hangman's hand came there. 



And sore he strove to have had their knives, 
But the sharp blades gashed his hands. 

Oh James ! so armed, thou hadst battled there 
Till help had come of thy bands ; 

And oh ! once more thou hadst held our throne 
And ruled thy Scotish lands ! 

But while the King o'er his foes still raged 
With a heart that nought could tame, 

Another man sprang down to the crypt ; 

And with his sword in his hand hard-gripp'd, 
There stood Sir Robert Graeme. 



(Now shame on the recreant traitor's heart 

Who durst not face his King 
Till the body unarmed was wearied out 

With two-fold combating ! 



I08 THE KINGS TRAGEDY, 

Ah ! well might the people sing and say, 

As oft ye have heard aright : — 
" O Robert GrcB7ne, O Robert GrcEme, 
Who slew our King, God give thee shame P^ 

For he slew him not as a knight.) 

And the naked King turned round at bay, 
But his strength had passed the goal, 

And he could but gasp : — " Mine hour is come ; 

But oh ! to succor thine own soul's doom. 
Let a priest now shrive my soul ! " 

And the traitor looked on the King's spent strength. 
And said : — " Have I kept my word? — 

Yea, King, the mortal pledge that I gave ? 

No black friar's shrift thy soul shall have. 
But the shrift of this red sword ! " 

With that he. smote his King through the breast ; 

And all they three in that pen 
Fell on him and stabbed and stabbed him there 

Like merciless murderous men. 

Yet seemed it now that Sir Robert Graeme, 
Ere the King's last breath was o'er, 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. 1 09 

Turned sick at heart with the deadly sight 
And would have done no more. * 

But a cry came from the troop above : — 

" If him thou do not slay, 
The price of his life that thou dost spare 

Thy forfeit life shall pay ! " 

O God ! what more did I hear or see, 

Or how should I tell the rest ? 
But there at length our King lay slain 

With sixteen wounds in his breast. 

O God ! and now did a bell boom forth, 

And the murderers turned and fled ; — 
Too late, too late, O God, did it sound ! — 
And I heard the true men mustering round, 
And the cries and the coming tread. 

But ere they came, to the black death-gap 

Somewise did I creep and steal ; 
And lo ! or ever I swooned away, 
Through the dusk I saw where the white face lay 

In the Pit of Fortune's Wheel. 



no THE KING'S TRAGEDY. 

And now, ye Scotish maids who have heard 
Dread things of the days grown old, — 

Even at the last, of true Queen Jane 
May somewhat yet be told, 

And how she dealt for her dear lord's sake 
Dire vengeance manifold. 

'T was in the Charterhouse of Perth, 

In the faii--lit Death-chapelle, 
That the slain King's corpse on bier was laid 

With chaunt and requiem-knell. 

And all with royal wealth of balm 

Was the body purified ; 
And none could trace on the brow and lips 

The death that he had died. 

In his robes of state he lay asleep 
With orb and sceptre in hand ; 

And by the crown he wore on his throne 
Was his kingly forehead spann'd. 

And, girls, 't was a sweet sad thing to see 
How the curling golden hair. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. Ill 

As in the day of the poet's youth, 

From the King's crown clustered there. 

And if all had come to pass in the brain 

That throbbed beneath those curls, 
Then Scots had said in the days to come 
That this their soil was a different home 

And a different Scotland, girls ! 

And the Queen sat by him night and day, 

And oft she knelt in prayer, 
All wan and pale in the widow's veil 

That shrouded her shining hair. 

And I had got good help of my hurt : 

And only to me some sign 
She made ; and save the priests that were there 

No face would she see but mine. 

And the month of March wore on apace ; 

And now fresh couriers fared 
Still from the country of the Wild Scots 

With news of the traitors snared. 



112 THE KINGS TRAGEDY, 

And still as I told her day by day, 

Her pallor changed to sight, 
And the frost grew to a furnace-flame 

That burnt her visage white. 

And evermore as I brought her word, 

She bent to her dead King James, 
And in the cold ear with fire-drawn breath 

She spoke the traitors' names. 

But when the name of Sir Robert Graeme 

Was the one she had to give, 
I ran to hold her up from the floor ; 
For the froth was on her lips, and sore 

I feared that she could not live. 

And the month of March wore nigh to its end, 
And still was the death-pall spread ; 

For she would not bury her slaughtered lord 
Till his slayers all were dead. 

And now of their dooms dread tidings came. 

And of torments fierce and dire ; 
And nought she spake, — she had ceased to speak. 

But her eyes were a soul on fire. 



THE KINGS TRAGEDY. II3 

But when I told her the bitter end 

Of the stern and just award, 
She leaned o'er the bier, and thrice three times 

She kissed the lips of her lord. 

And then she said, — " My King, they are dead ! " 

And she knelt on the chapel-floor. 
And whispered low with a strange proud smile, — 

" James, James, they suffered more ! " 

Last she stood up to her queenly height, 

But she shook like an autumn leaf, 
As though the fire wherein she burned 
Then left her body, and all were turned 

To winter of Hfe-long grief. 

And " O James ! " she said, — " My James ! " she 
said, — 

" Alas for the woful thing. 
That a poet tme and a friend of man, 
In desperate days of bale and ban, 

Should needs be born a King ! " 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE 

A SONNET-SEQUENCE. 



Part I. 
YOUTH AND CHANGE. 

Part II. 
CHANGE AND FATE. 



(The present full series of The House of Life consists of son- 
nets only. It will be evident that many among those now first 
added are still the work of earlier years.) 



A Sonnet is a momenfs monument^ — 

Memorial from the SouVs eternity 

To 07ie dead deathless hour. Look that it be^ 
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent^ 
Of its 0W71 arduous fulness rezterent: 

Carve it in ivory or in ebofty, 

As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see 
Its flowering crest imp ear led and orient. 

A Sonnet is a coin : its face reveals 

The soul, — its converse, to what Power His due : — 
Whether for tribute to the august appeals 

Of Life, or dower in Lover's high retifiue. 
It serve; or, ^- mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, 
In Charon^ s palm it pay the toll to Death. 



PART I. 

YOUTH AND CHANGE. 

SONNET I. 

LOVE ENTHRONED. 

I MARKED all kindred Powers the heart finds fair : — 
Truth, with awed lips ; and Hope, with eyes upcast ; 
And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past 

To signal-fires. Oblivion's flight to scare ; 

And Youth, with still some single golden hair 
Unto his shoulder cHnging, since the last 
Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast ; 

And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear. 

Love's throne was not with these ; but far above 
All passionate wind of welcome and farewell 

He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of ; 

Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope fore- 
tell. 
And Fame be for Love's sake desirable, 

And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love. 



120 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET II. 
BRIDAL BIRTH. 

As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first 
The mother looks upon the newborn child. 
Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled 

When her soul knew at length the Love it nurs'd. 

Born with her hfe, creature of poignant thirst 
And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay 
Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day 

Cried on him, and the bonds of birth were burst. 

Now, shadowed by his wings, our faces yearn 
Together, as his fullgrown feet now range 

The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare 
Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn 

Be bom his children, when Death's nuptial change 
Leaves us for light the halo of his hair. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 21 

SONNET III. 
LOVE'S TESTAMENT. 

O THOU who at Love's hour ecstatically 
Unto my heart dost ever more present, 
Clothed with his fire, thy heart his testament j 

Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be 

The inmost incense of his sanctuary ; 

Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent 
Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent. 

And murmured, " I am thine, thou 'rt one with me ! " 

O what from thee the grace, to me the prize. 
And what to Love the glory, — when the whole 
Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal 
And weary water of the place of sighs. 
And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes 
Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul ! 



122 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET rV. 
LOVESIGHT. 

When do I see thee most, beloved one ? 

When in the light the spirits of mine eyes 

Before thy face, their altar, solemnize 
The worship of that Love through thee made known ? 
Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) 

Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies 

Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, 
And my soul only sees thy soul its own ? 

O love, my love ! if I no more should see f 
Thyself, nor on the eaith the shadow of thee, 

Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, — 
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope 
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, 

The wind of Death's imperishable wing? 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 123 



SONNET V. 



HEART'S HOPE. 



By what word's power, the key of paths untrod, 
Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore, 
Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore 

Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod ? 

For lo ! in some poor rhythmic period, 
Lady, I fain would tell how evermore 
Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor 

Thee from myself, neither our love from God. 

Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I 
Draw from one loving heart such evidence 

As to all hearts all things shall signify ; 

Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense 
As instantaneous penetrating sense, 

In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by. 



124 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 

SONNET VI. 
THE KISS. 

What smouldering senses in death's sick delay 
Or seizure of malign vicissitude 
Can rob this body of honor, or denude 

This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day ? 

For lo ! even now my lady's lips did play 
With these my lips such consonant interlude 
As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed 

The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay. 

I was a child beneath her touch, — a man 

When breast to breast we clung, even I and she, 
A spirit when her spirit looked through me, — 
A god when all our life-breath met to fan 
Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardors ran, 
Fire within fire, desire in deity. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 125 

SONNET VII. 

SUPREME SURRENDER. 

To all the spirits of Love that wander by 
Along his love-sown harvest-field of sleep 
My lady lies apparent ; and the deep 

Calls to the deep ; and no man sees but I. 

The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh, 

Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep 
When Fate's control doth from his harvest reap 

The sacred hour for which the years did sigh. 

First touched, the hand now warm around my neck 
Taught memory long to mock desire : and lo ! 
Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow. 
Where one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache : 
And next the heart that trembled for its sake 
Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow. 



126 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET VIII. 
LOVE'S LOVERS. 

Some ladies love the jewels in Love's zone 
And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play 
In idle scornful hours he flings away ; 

And some that listen to his lute's soft tone 

Do love to vaunt the silver praise their own ; 

Some prize his blindfold sight ; and there be they 
Who kissed his wings wliich brought him yesterday 

And thank his wings to-day that he is flown. 

My lady only loves the heart of Love : 

Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee 
His bower of unimagined flower and tree : 
There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of 
Thine eyes gray-lit in shadowing hair above, 
Seals with thy mouth his immortality. 



J 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 127 

SONNET IX. 
PASSION AND WORSHIP. 

One flame-winged brought a white-winged harp-player 

Even where my lady and I lay all alone ; 

Saying : " Behold, this minstrel is unknown ; 
Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here : 
Only my strains are to Love's dear ones dear." 

Then said I : " Through thine hautboy's rapturous tone 

Unto my lady still this harp makes moan, 
And still she deems the cadence deep and clear." 

Then said my lady : " Thou art Passion of Love, 
And this Love's Worship : both he plights to me. 
Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea ; 

But where wan water trembles in the grove 

And the wan moon is all the light thereof. 
This harp still makes my name its voluntary." 



128 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 

SONNET X. 
THE PORTRAIT. 

O Lord of all compassionate control, 
O Love ! let this my lady's picture glow 
Under my hand to praise her name, and show 

Even of her inner self the perfect whole : 

That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal, 
Beyond the light that the sweet glances throw 
And refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know 

The very sky and sea-line of her soul. 

Lo ! it is done. Above the enthroning throat 
The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss, 
The shadowed eyes remember and foresee. 
Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note 
That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this !) 

They that would look on her must come to me. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 29 

SONNET XI. 
THE LOVE-LETTER. 

Warmed by her hand and shadowed by her hair 

As close she leaned and poured her heart through thee, 
Whereof the articulate throbs accompany 

The smooth black stream that makes thy whiteness fair, — 

Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware, — 
Oh let thy silent song disclose to me 
That soul wherewith her hps and eyes agree 

Like married music in Love's answering air. 

Fain had I watched her when, at some fond thought. 
Her bosom to the writing closeHer press'd, 
And her breast's secrets peered into her breast ; 
When, through eyes raised an instant, her soul sought 
My soul, and from the sudden confluence caught 
The words that made her love the loveliest. 



130 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 

SONNET XII. 
THE LOVERS' WALK. 

Sv/EET twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise 
On this June day ; and hand that clings in hand : — 
Still glades ; and meeting faces scarcely fann'd : — 

An osier-odored stream that draws the skies 

Deep to its heart ; and mirrored eyes in eyes : — 
Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land 
Of light and cloud ; and two souls softly spann'd 

With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs : — 

Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto 
Each other's visible sweetness amorously, — 
Whose passionate hearts lean by Love's high decree 

Together on his heart for ever true, 

As the cloud-foaming firmamental blue 
Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 131 

SONNET XIII. 
YOUTH'S ANTIPHONY. 

" I LOVE you, sweet : how can you ever learn 
How much I love you? " " You I love even so, 
And so I learn it." " Sweet, you cannot know 

How fair you are." *' If fair enough to earn 

Your love, so much is all my love's concern." 

" My love grows hourly, sweet." " Mine too doth 

grow. 
Yet love seemed full so many hours ago ! " 

Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn. 

Ah ! happy they to whom such words as these 

In youth have served for speech the whole day long, 
Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng, 
Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas, — 
What while Love breathed in sighs and silences 
Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong. 



132 THE HOUSE OF LIFE 



SONNET XIV. 
YOUTH'S SPRING-TRIBUTE. 

On this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear 
I lay, and spread your hair on either side, 
And see the newborn woodflowers bashful-eyed 

Look through the golden tresses here and there. 

On these debateable borders of the year 

Spring's foot half falters ; scarce she yet may know 
The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow ; 

And through her bowers the ^vind's way still is clear. 

But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day ; 
So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss 

Creep, as the Spring now thrills thi'ough every spray, 
Up your warm throat to your warm lips : for this 
Is even the hour of Love's sworn suitservice, 

With whom cold hearts are counted castaway. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 133 

SONNET XV. 
THE BIRTH-BOND. 

Have you not noted, in some family 

Where two were bom of a first marriage-bed, 
How still they own their gracious bond, though fed 

And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee ? — 

How to their father's children they shall be 
In act and thought of one goodwill ; but each 
Shall for the other have, in silence speech, 

And in a word complete community ? 



Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love, 
That among souls allied to mine was yet 

One nearer kindred than life hinted of. 

O born with me somewhere that men forget, 
And though in years of sight and sound unmet. 

Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough ! 



134 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XVI. 
A DAY OF LOVE. 

Those envied places which do know her well, 
And are so scornful of this lonely place, 
Even now for once are emptied of her grace : 

Nowhere but here she is : and while Love's spell 

From his predominant presence doth compel 
All alien hours, an outworn populace. 
The hours of Love fill full the echoing space 

With sweet confederate music favorable. 

Now many memories make solicitous 
The delicate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit 
With quivering fire, the words take wing from it ; 

As here between our kisses we sit thus 

Speaking of things remembered, and so sit 

Speechless while things forgotten call to us. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 35 

SONNET XVII. 
BEAUTY'S PAGEANT. 

What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last 
Incarnate flower of culminating day, — 
What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May, 

Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast ; 

What glory of change by nature's hand amass 'd 
Can vie with all those moods of varying grace 
Which o'er one loveHest woman's form and face 

Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd ? 

Love's very vesture and elect disguise 
Was each fine movement, — wonder new-begot 
Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot ; 

Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs, 

Parted again ; and sorrow yet for eyes 
Unborn, that read these words and saw her not. 



136 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 

SONNET XVIII. 
GENIUS IN BEAUTY. 

Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call 
Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime, — 
Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time, — 

Is more with compassed mysteries musical ; 

Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall 
More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes 
Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes 

Even from its shadowed contour on the wall. 

As many men are poets in their youth, 

But for one sweet- strung soul the wires prolong 
Even through all change the indomitable song ; 
So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth 
Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth, 
Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 137 

SONNET XIX. 

SILENT NOON. 

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, — 
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms : 
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and 
glooms 

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. 

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, 
Are golden kingcup- fields with silver edge 
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge. 

'T is visible silence, still as the hour-glass. 

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly 
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky : — 

So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above. 
Oh ! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, 
This close-companioned inarticulate hour 

When twofold silence was the song of love. 



138 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 



SONNET XX. 

GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT. 

Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid- space 
When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car 
Thrills with intenser radiance from afar, — 

So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace 

When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face 
Wliat shall be said, — which, like a governing star, 
Gathers and gamers from all things that are 

Their silent penetrative lovehness? 

O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring, 

There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf 
With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf, 
So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring 
Of cloud above and wave below, take wing 

And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 139 

SONNET XXI. 
LOVE-SWEETNESS. 

Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall 
About thy face ; her sweet hands round thy head 
In gracious fostering union garlanded ; 

Her tremulous smiles ; her glances' sweet recall 

Of love ; her murmuring sighs memorial ; 

Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed 
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led 

Back to her mouth which answers there for all : — 

What sweeter than these things, except the thing 
In lacking which all these would lose their sweet : — 
The confident heart's still fervor : the swift beat - 
And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing, 
Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring, 
The breath of kindred plumes against its feet? 



140 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XXII. 
HEART'S HAVEN. 

Sometimes she is a child within mine arms, 

Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase, — 
With still tears showering and averted face, 

Inexplicably filled with faint alarms : 

And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms 
I crave the refuge of her deep embrace, — 
Against all ills the fortified strong place 

And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms. 

And Love, our light at night and shade at noon. 
Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away 
All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day. 

Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune ; 

And as soft waters warble to the moon, 
Our answering spirits chime one roundelay. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 141 



SONNET XXIII. 
LOVE'S BAUBLES. 

I STOOD where Love in brimming armfuls bore 
Slight wanton flowers and fooHsh toys of fruit : 
And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit, 

Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store. 

And from one hand the petal and the core 

Savored of sleep ; and cluster and curled shoot 
Seemed from another hand like shame's salute, — 

Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for. 

At last Love bade my Lady give the same : 
And as I looked, the dew was light thereon \ 
And as I took them, at her touch they shone 

With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame. 

And then Love said : " Lo ! when the hand is hers, 
FolHes of love are love's true ministers." 



142 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 

SONNET XXIV. 
PRIDE OF YOUTH. 

Even as a child, of sorrow that we give 
The dead, but little in his heart can find, 
Since without need of thought to his clear mind 

Their turn it is to die and his to live : — 

Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive 
Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind. 
Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind 

Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive. 

There is a change in every hour's recall. 
And the last cowslip in the fields we see 
On the same day with the first corn-poppy. 

Alas for hourly change ! Alas for all 

The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall. 
Even as the beads of a told rosary ! 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 143 

SONNET XXV. 
WINGED HOURS. 

Each hour until we meet is as a bird 
That wings from far his gradual way along 
The rustling covert of my soul, — his song 

Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd : 

But at the hour of meeting, a clear word 

Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue ; 

Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers wrong. 

Full oft through our contending joys unheard. 

What of that hour at last, when for her sake 
No wing may fly to me nor song may flow ; 
When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know 

The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake, 
And think how she, far from me, with like eyes 

Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies ? 



144 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XXVI. 

MID-RAPTURE. 

Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love ; 

Whose kiss seems still the first ; whose summoning eyes, 

Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise, 
Shed very dawn ; whose voice, attuned above 
All modulation of the deep-bowered dove. 

Is like a hand laid softly on the soul ; 

Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control 
Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of : — 

\Vhat word can answer to thy word, — what gaze 
To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere 
My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there 

Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays ? 
What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove, 
O lovely and beloved, O my love ? 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 145 

SONNET XXVII. 
HEART'S COMPASS. 

Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone, 

But as the meaning of all things that are ; 

A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar 
Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon ; 
Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone ; 

Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar, 

Being of its furthest fires oracular ; — 
The evident heart of all life sown and mown. 

Even such Love is ; and is not thy name Love ? 
Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart 
All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art ; 

Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above ; 

And simply, as some gage of flower or glove, 
Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart. 



10 



146 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XXVIII. 

SOUL-LIGHT. 

What other woman could be loved like you, 
Or how of you should love possess his fill ? 
After the fulness of all rapture, still, — 

As at the end of some deep avenue 

A tender glamour of day, — there comes to view 
Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill, — 
Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil 

Even from his inmost ark of light and dew. 

And as the traveller triumphs with the sun. 

Glorying in heat's mid-height, yet startide brings 
Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs 

From limpid lambent hours of day begun ; — 

Even so, through eyes and voice, your soul doth move 
My soul with changeful light of infinite love. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 147 

SONNET XXIX. 

THE MOONSTAR. 

Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness, 
.Because my lady is more lovely still. 

Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill 
To thee thy tribute ; by whose sweet-spun dress 
Of delicate life Love labors to assess 

My lady's absolute queendom ; saying, " Lo ! 

How high this beauty is, which yet doth show 
But as that beauty's sovereign votaress." 

Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side ; 

And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround. 

An emulous star too near the moon will ride, — 
Even so thy rays within her luminous bound 
Were traced no more ; and by the light so drown'd. 

Lady, not thou but she was glorified. 



148 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 



SONNET XXX. 
LAST FIRE. 

Love, through your spirit and mine what summer eve 
Now glows with glory of all things possess'd, 
Since this day's sun of rapture filled the west 

i\nd the light sweetened as the fire took leave ? 

Awhile now Softlier let your bosom heave, 
As in Love's harbor, even that loving breast, 
All care takes refuge while we sink to rest, 

And mutual dreams the bygone bhss retrieve. 

Many the days that Winter keeps in store. 

Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses 
Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked trees. 

This day at least was Summer's paramour. 

Sun-colored to the imperishable core 

With sweet well-being of love and full heart's ease. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 149 



SONNET XXXI. 



HER GIFTS. 

High grace, the dower of queens ; and therewithal 

Some wood-bom wonder's sweet simplicity ; 

A glance like water brimming with the sky 
Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall ; 
Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral 

The heart ; a mouth whose passionate forms imply 

All music and all silence, held thereby ; 
Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal ; 
A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine 

To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary ; 

Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be. 
And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign : — 

These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er. 

Breathe low her name, my soul j for that means more. 



ISO THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 



SONNET XXXII. 



EQUAL TROTH. 

Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love ; 

For how should I be loved as I love thee ? — 

I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely 
All gifts that with thy queenship best behove ; — 
Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove. 

And crowned with garlands culled from every tree. 

Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree, 
All beauties and all mysteries interwove. 

But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke : — 
"Then only," (say'st thou) "could I love thee less, 
When thou couldst doubt my love's equahty." 

Peace, sweet ! If not to sum but worth we look, — 
Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess, — 
Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than I. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 151 



SONNET XXXIII. 

VENUS VICTRIX. 

Could Juno's self more sovereign presence wear 
Than thou, 'mid other ladies throned in grace ? — 
Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with soul-stilled face 

O'er poet's page gold-shadowed in thy hair ? 

Dost thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair 
When o'er the sea of love's tumultuous trance 
Hovers thy smile, and mingles with thy glance 

That sweet voice like the last wave murmuring there ? 

Before such triune loveliness divine 

Awestruck I ask, which goddess here most claims 
The prize that, howsoe'er adjudged, is thine ? 

Then Love breathes low the sweetest of thy names ; 
And Venus Victrix to my heart doth bring 
Herself, the Helen of her guerdoning. 



152 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XXXIV. 
THE DARK GLASS. 

Not I myself know all my love for thee : 

How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh 
To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday? 

Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be 

As doors and windows bared to some loud sea, 

Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray ; 
And shall my sense pierce love, — the last Felay 

And ultimate outpost of eternity ? 

Lo ! what am I to Love, the lord of all ? 

One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand, — 
One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand. 

Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call 

And veriest touch of powers primordial 
That any hour-girt life may understand. 



I 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 153 

SONNET XXXV. 

THE LAMP'S SHRINE. 

Sometimes I fain would find in thee some fault, 
That I might love thee still in spite of it : 
Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit 

Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt ? 

Alas ! he can but make my heart's low vault 
Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit 
By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite 

Like fiery chrysoprase in deep basalt. 

Yet will I nowise shrink ; but at Love's shrine 
Myself within the beams his brow doth dart 
Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart 

In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine : 
For lo ! in honor of thine excellencies 
My heart takes pride to show how poor it is. 



154 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 



SONNET XXXVI. 

LIFE-IN-LOVE. 

Not in thy body is thy life at all 

But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes ; 

Through these she yields thee Hfe that vivifies 
What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall. 
Look on thyself without her, and recall 

The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise 

That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs 
O'er vanished hours and hours eventual. 



Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair 
Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show 
For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago \ 

Even so much life endures unknown, even where, 
'Mid change the changeless night environeth. 
Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 155 

SONNET XXXVII. 

THE LOVE-MOON. 

*' When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years, 
Which once was all the life years held for thee, 
Can now scarce bid the tides of memory 

Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears, — 

How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers 
Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see 
Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy 

Make them of buried troth remembrancers? " 

" Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity ! Well 

Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess 'd 

Two very voices of thy summoning bell. 

Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest 

In these the culminant changes which approve 

The love-moon that must Hght my soul to Love ? " 



156 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 



SONNET XXXVIII. 

THE MORROW'S MESSAGE. 

*' Thou Ghost," I said, " and is thy name To-day ? — 
Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow ! — 
And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?" 

While yet I spoke, the silence answered : " Yea, 

Henceforth our issue is all grieved and gray, 
And each beforehand makes such poor avow 
As of old leaves beneath the budding bough 

Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away." 

Then cried I ; " Mother of many malisons, 
O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed ! " 
But therewithal the tremulous silence said : 
*' Lo ! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once : — 
Yea, twice, — whereby thy life is still the sun's ; 
And thrice, — whereby the shadow of death is dead." 



I 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 157 

SONNET XXXIX. 

SLEEPLESS DREAMS. 

Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star, 

O night desirous as the nights of youth ! 

Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth, 
Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are 
Quickened within the girdling golden bar ? 

What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth ? 

And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth, 
Tread softly round and gaze at me from far? 

Nay, night deep-leaved ! And would Love feign in thee 
Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears 
Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears ? 

O lonely night ! art thou not known to me, 

A thicket hung with masks of mockery 

And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears ? 



158 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET XL. 



SEVERED SELVES. 



Two separate divided silences, 

Which, brought together, would find loving voice ; 

Two glances which together would rejoice 
In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees ; 
Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease ; 

Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame, 

Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same ; 
Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas : - 

Such are we now. Ah ! may our hope forecast 

Indeed one hour again, when on this stream 

Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam ? — 

An hour how slow to come, how quickly past, — 

Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last, 

Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 59 



SONNET XLI. 

THROUGH DEATH TO LOVE. 

Like labor-laden moonclouds faint to flee 

From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold, — 
Like multiform circumfluence manifold 

Of night's flood-tide, — like terrors that agree 

Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea, — 

Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath. 
Our hearts discern wild images of Death, 

Shadows and shoals that edge eternity. 

Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar 
One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove 
Sweeter to glide around, to brood above. 
Tell me, my heart, — what angel-greeted door 
Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor 
Hath guest fire-fledged as thine, whose lord is Love ? 



l6o THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XLII. 
HOPE OVERTAKEN. 

I DEEMED thy garments, O my Hope, were gray, 
So far I viewed thee. Now the space between 
Is passed at length ; and garmented in green 

Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day. 

Ah God ! and but for lingering dull dismay, 
On all that road our footsteps erst had been 
Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen 

Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way. 

O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love, 

No eyes but hers, — O Love and Hope the same ! 
Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun 
That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above. 
O hers thy voice and very hers thy name ! 
Alas, cling round me, for the day is done ! 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 6] 



SONNET XLIII. 

LOVE AND HOPE. 

Bless love and hope. Full many a withered year 
Whirled past us, eddying to its chill doomsday ; 
And clasped together where the blown leaves lay, 

We long have knelt and wept full many a tear. 

Yet lo ! one hour at last, the Spring's compeer, 
Flutes softly to us from some green byeway : 
Those years, those tears are dead, but only they : - 

Bless love and hope, true soul ; for we are here. 

Cling heart to heart ; nor of this hour demand 
Whether in very truth, when we are dead, 
Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head 

Sole sunshine of the imperishable land ; 

Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope. 
Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope. 



l62 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XLIV. 
CLOUD AND WIND. 

Love, should I fear death most for you or me ? 
Yet if you die, can I not follow you, 
Forcing the straits of change ? Alas ! but who 

Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy, 

Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be 

Her warrant against all her haste miglit rue ? — 
Ah ! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu. 

What unsunned gyres of waste eternity ? 

And if I die the first, shall death be then 

A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep ? — 
Or (woe is me !) a bed wherein my sleep 
Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain), 
The hour when you too learn that all is vain 

And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap ? 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. I 

SONNET XLV. 

SECRET PARTING. 

Because our talk was of the cloud- control 

And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate, 
Her tremulous kisses faltered at love's gate 

And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal : 

But soon, remembering her how brief the whole 
Of joy, which its own hours annihilate, 
Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late, 

And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul. 

Thence in what ways we wandered, and how strove 
To build with fire -tried vows the piteous home 
Which memory haunts and whither sleep may roam, 

They only know for whom the roof of Love 

Is the still-seated secret of the grove. 

Nor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom. 



1 64 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XLVI. 

PARTED LOVE. 

What shall be said of this embattled day 
And armed occupation of tliis night 
By all thy foes beleaguered, — now when sight 

Nor sound denotes the loved one far away? 

Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say, — 
As every sense to which she dealt delight 
Now labors lonely o'er the stark noon-height 

To reach the sunset's desolate disarray ? 

Stand still, fond fettered wretch ! while Memory's art 
Parades the Past before thy face, and lures 
Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures : 
Till the tempestuous ti*de-gates flung apart 
Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart, 
And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 165 

SONNET XLVII. 
BROKEN MUSIC. 

The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears 
Her nursling's speech first grow articulate ; 
But breathless with averted eyes elate 

She sits, with open lips and open ears, 

That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears 
Thus oft my soul has hearkened j till the song, 
A central moan for days, at length found tongue, 

And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears. 

But now, whatever while the soul is fain 

To Hst that wonted murmur, as it were 
The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain, — 

No breath of song, thy voice alone is there, 
O bitterly beloved ! and all her gain 

Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer. 



1 66 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET XLVIII. 

DEATH-IN-LOVE. 

There came an image in Life's retinue 

That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon : 
Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon, 

O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue ! 

Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to. 

Shook in its folds ; and through my heart its power 
Sped trackless as the immemorable hour 

When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new. 

But a veiled woman followed, and she caught 
The banner round its staff, to furl and cling, — 
Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing, 

And held it to his lips that stirred it not. 

And said to me, " Behold, there is no breath : 
I and this Love are one, and I am Death." 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. l6y 

SONNETS XLIX., L., LI., LII. 

WILLOWWOOD. 



I SAT with Love upon a woodside well, 

Leaning across the water, I and he ; 

Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me, 
But touched his lute wherein was audible 
The certain secret thing he had to tell : 

Only our mirrored eyes met silently 

In the low wave ; and that sound came to be 
The passionate voice I knew ; and my tears fell. 

And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers ; 
And with his foot and with his wing-feathers 

He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth. 
Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair, 
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there 

Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth. 



1 68 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



IL 



And now Love sang : but his was such a song, 
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free, 
As souls disused in death's sterility 

May sing when the new birthday tarries long. 

And I was made aware of a dumb throng 
That stood aloof, one form by every tree, 
All mournful forms, for each was I or she. 

The shades of those our days that had no tongue. 

They looked on us, and knew us and were known ; 
While fast together, alive from the abyss. 
Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss ; 
And pity of self through all made broken moan 
Which said, " For once, for once, for once alone ! " 
And still Love sang, and what he sang was this : - 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 169 



III. 



" O YE, all ye that walk in Willowwood, 

That walk with hollow faces burning white ; 
What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood, 

What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night. 
Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed 

Your last hope loSl, who so in vain invite 
Your lips to that their unforgotten food, 

Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light ! 

Alas ! the bitter banks in Willowwood, 

With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red 
Alas ! if ever such a pillow could 

Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead, — 
Better all life forget her than this thing. 
That Willowwood should hold her wandering ! " 



170 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



IV. 



So sang he : and as meeting rose and rose 
Together cling through the wind's wellaway 
Nor change at once, yet near the end of day 

The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows, 

So when the song died did the kiss unclose ; 
And her face fell back drowned, and was as gray 
As its gray eyes ; and if it ever may 

Meet mine again I know not if Love knows. 

Only I know that I leaned low and drank 

A long draught from the water where she sank, 

Her breath and all her tears and all her soul : 
And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face 
Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace, 

Till both our heads were in his aureole. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 171 

« 
SONNET LIII. 

WITHOUT HER. 

What of her glass without her ? The blank gray 
There where the pool is blind of the moon's face. 
Her dress without her? The tossed empty space 

Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away. 

Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway 
Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place 
Without her? Tears, ah me ! for love's good grace, 

And cold forgetfulness of night or day. 

What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart, 
Of thee what word remains ere speech be still ? 
A wayfarer by barren ways and chill, 
Steep ways and weary, without her thou art. 
Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart, 
Sheds doubled darkness up the laboring hill. 



172 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET LIV. 



LOVE'S FATALITY. 



Sweet Love, — but oh ! most dread Desire of Love 
Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand, 
Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand : 

And one was eyed as the blue vault above : 

But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove 
I' the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand 
Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has spann'd 

The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove. 

Also his lips, two wTithen flakes o£ flame, 

Made moan : " Alas O Love, thus leashed with me ! 
Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free : 
And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame, — 
Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name, — 
Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality." 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 173 



SONNET LV. 

STILLBORN LOVE. 

The hour which might have been yet might not be, 
Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore 
Yet whereof life was barren, — on what shore 

Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea? 

Bondchild of all consummate joys set free, 

It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before 
The house of Love, hears through the echoing door 

His hours elect in choral consonancy. 

But lo ! what wedded souls now hand in hand 
Together tread at last the immortal strand 

With eyes where burning memory lights love home ? 
Lo ! how the little outcast hour has turned 
And leaped to them and in their faces yearned : — 

" I am your child : O parents, ye have come ! " 



174 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNETS LVI., LVII., LVIII. 
TRUE WOMAN. 

I. HERSELF. 

To be a sweetness more desired than Spring ; 

A bodily beauty more acceptable 

Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell ; 
To be an essence more environing 
Than wine's drained juice ; a music ravishing 

More than the passionate pulse of Philomel; — 

To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell 
That is the flower of life : — how strange a thing ! 

How strange a thing to be what Man can know 
But as a sacred secret ! Heaven's own screen 

Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow ; 
Closely withheld, as all things most unseen, — 
The wave-bowered pearl, — the heart-shaped seal of 
green 

That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 75 



II. HER LOVE. 

She loves him ; for her infinite soul is Love, 
And he her lodestar. Passion in her is 
A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss 

Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move 

That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove, 
And it shall turn, by instant contraries. 
Ice to the moon ; while her pure fire to his 

For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove. 

Lo ! they are one. With wifely breast to breast 
And circling arms, she welcomes all command 
Of love, — her soul to answering ardors fann'd : 
Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest. 
Ah ! who shall say she deems not loveliest 
The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand ? 



1/6 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



m. HER HEAVEN. 

If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young, 
(As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he 
With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be 

True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung. 

Here and hereafter, — choir-strains of her tongue, — 
Sky-spaces of her eyes, — sweet signs that flee 
About her soul's immediate sanctuary, — 

Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among. 

The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill 
Like any hillflower ; and the noblest troth 
Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe 

Even yet those lovers who have cherished still 
This test for love : — in every kiss sealed fast 
To feel the first kiss and forbode the last. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. lyy 

SONNET LIX. 
LOVE'S LAST GIFT. 

Love to his singer held a glistening leaf, 
And said : " The rose-tree and the apple-tree 
Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee ; 

And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf 

Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief. 
Victorious Summer ; aye, and 'neath warm sea 
Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably 

Between the filtering channels of sunk reef. 

All are my blooms ; and all sweet blooms of love 
To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang ; 
But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang 

From those worse things the wind is moaning of. 
Only this laurel dreads no winter days : 
Take my last gift ; thy heart hath sung my praise." 



I 



PART II. 

CHANGE AND FATE. 

SONNET LX. 

TRANSFIGURED LIFE. 

As growth of form or momentary glance 
In a child's features will recall to mind 
The father's with the mother's face combin'd, — 

Sweet interchange that memories still enhance : 

And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance, 
The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind, 
Till in the blended likeness now we find 

A separate man's or woman's countenance : — 

So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain, 

Its very parents, evermore expand 
To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain, 

By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd ; 

And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand 
There comes the sound as of abundant rain. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 79 

SONNET LXI. 
THE SONG-THROE. 

By thine own tears thy song must tears beget, 
O Singer ! Magic mirror thou hast none 
Except thy manifest heart ; and save thine own 

Anguish or ardor, else no amulet. 

Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet 
Of soulless air-flung fountains ; nay, more dry 
Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, 

That song o'er which no singer's Hds grew wet. 

The Song-god — He the Sun-god — is no slave 
Of thine : thy Hunter he, who for thy soul 
Fledges his shaft : to no august control 

Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave : 
But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart. 
The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart. 



l80 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET LXII. 

THE SOUL'S SPHERE. 

Some prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses, — 

Throned queen and thralled j some dying sun whose 

pyre 
Blazed with momentous memorable fire ; — 

Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these ? 

Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease 
Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight 
Conjectured in the lamentable night? 

Lo ! the soul's sphere of infinite images ! 

What sense shall count them ? Whether it forecast 
The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van 
Of Love's unquestioning unrevealed span, — 

Visions of golden futures : or that last 

Wild pageant of the accumulated past 
That clangs and flashes for a drowning man. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. l8l 

SONNET LXIII. 

INCLUSIVENESS. 

The changing guests, each in a different mood, 

Sit at the roadside table and arise : 

And every life among them in likewise 
Is a soul's board set daily with new food. 
What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood 

How that face shall watch his when cold it lies ? — 

Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, 
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed ? 

May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell 
In separate living souls for joy or pain ? 
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain 

Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well j 
And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, 

Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell. 



S2 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET LXIV. 

ARDOR AND MEMORY. 

The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring ; 
The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows 
Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose ; 

The summer clouds that visit every wing 

With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting ; 

The furtive flickering streams to light re-born 
'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of mom, 

While all the daughters of the daybreak sing : — 

These ardor loves, and memory : and when flown 
All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight 
The \vind swoops onward brandishing the light. 
Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone 
Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone ; 
With ditties and with dirges infinite. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 83 



SONNET LXV. 



KNOWN IN VAIN. 



As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, 
;^nows suddenly, to music high and soft, 
The Holy of holies ; who because they scoff d 

Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope 

With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope ; 
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd 
In speech ; nor speak, at length ; but sitting oft 

Together, within hopeless sight of hope 

For hours are silent : — So it happeneth 

When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze 

After their life sailed by, and hold their breath. 

Ah ! who shall dare to search through what sad maze 
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways 

Follow the desultory feet of Death ? 



1 84 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 



SONNET LXVI. 

THE HEART OF THE NIGHT. 

From child to youth ; from youth to arduous man ; 

From lethargy to fever of the heart ; 

From faithful life to dream- dowered days apart ; 
From trust to doubt ; from doubt to brink of ban ; - 
Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran 

Till now. Alas, the soul ! — how soon must she 

Accept her primal immortality, — 
The flesh resume its dust whence it began ? 



O Lord of work and peace ! O Lord of life ! 
O Lord, the awful Lord of will ! though late, 
Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath : 

That when the peace is garnered in from strife, 
The work retrieved, the will regenerate. 
This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death ! 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 85 



SONNET LXVII. 



THE LANDMARK. 



Was that the landmark? What, — the foolish well 
Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink, 
But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink 

In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, 

(And mine own image, had I noted well !) — 
Was that my point of turning ? — I had thought 
The stations of my course should rise unsought. 

As altar-stone or ensigned citadel. 

But lo ! the path is missed, I must go back, 

And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring 

Which once I stained, which since may have grown black. 
Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing 
As here I turn, I '11 thank God, hastening. 

That the same goal is still on the same track. 



1 86 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET LXVIII. 



A DARK DAY. 



The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs 
Is hke the drops which strike the traveller's brow 
Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now 

Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears. 

Ah ! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares, 
Or hath but memory of the day whose plough 
Sowed hunger once, — the night at length when thou, 

O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers ? 



How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth. 
Along the hedgerows of this journey shed. 

Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe ! 
Even as the thistledo\vn from pathsides dead 

Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth. 
Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 8/ 

SONNET LXIX. 

AUTUMN IDLENESS. 

This sunlight shames November where he grieves 
In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun 
The day, though bough with bough be over-run. 

But with a blessing every glade receives 

High salutation ; while from hillock-eaves 

The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun. 
As if, being foresters of old, the sun 

Had marked them with the shade of forest- leaves. 

Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass -, 

Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew ; 

Till eve bring rest when other good things pass. 
And here the lost hours the lost hours renew 

While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass. 
Nor know, for longing, that which I should do. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET LXX. 



THE HILL SUMMIT. 



This feast-day of the sun, his altar there 

In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song ; 
And I have loitered in the vale too long 

And gaze now a belated worshipper. 

Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware, 
So journeying, of his face at intervals 
Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls, — 

A fiery bush with coruscating hair. 



And now that I have climbed and won this height, 
I must tread downward through the sloping shade 

And travel the bewildered tracks till night. 
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed 
And see the gold air and the silver fade 

And the last bird fly into the last light. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 1 89 

SONNETS LXXI., LXXIL, LXXIII. 

THE CHOICE. 
I. 

Eat thou and drink ; to-morrow thou shalt die. 

Surely the earth, that 's wise being very old, 

Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold 
Thy sultry hair up from my face ; that I 
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high, 

Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold. 

We '11 drown all hours : thy song, while hours are toll'd. 
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky. 

Now kiss, and think that there are really those, 
My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase 

Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way ! 
Through many years they toil ; then on a day 
They die not, — for their life was death, — but cease ; 
And round their narrow lips the mould falls close. 



190 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



II. 



Watch thou and fear ; to-morrow thou shalt die. 

Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death ? 

Is not the day which God's word promiseth 
To come man knows not when ? In yonder sky, 
Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth : can I 

Or thou assure him of his goal ? God's breath 

Even at this moment haply quickeneth 
The air to a flame ; till spirits, always nigh 
Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here. 

And dost thou prate of all that man shall do ? 
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be 
Glad in liis gladness that comes after thee ? 

Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell ? Go to : 
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 191 



III. 



Think thou and act j to-morrow thou shalt die. 
Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, 
Thou say'st ; " Man's measured path is all gone o'er : 

Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, 

Man clomb until he touched the truth ; and I, 
Even I, am he whom it was destined for." 
How should this be ? Art thou then so much more 

Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby ? 

Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound 
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me ; 

Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. 
Miles and miles distant though the last line be. 

And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond, — 
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea. 



192 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNETS LXXIV., .LXXV., LXXVI. 

OLD AND NEW ART. 

I. St. Luke the Painter. 

Give honor unto Luke Evangelist ; 

For he it was (the aged legends say) 

Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. 
Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist 
Of devious symbols : but soon having wist 

How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day 

Are S5niibols also in some deeper way, 
She looked through these to God and was God's priest. 

And if, past noon, her toil began to irk, 

And she sought tahsmans, and turned in vain 
To soulless self-reflections of man's skill, — 
Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still 
Kneel in the latter grass to pray again. 
Ere the night cometh and she may not work. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 193 



II. Not as These. 

^' I AM not as these are," the poet saith 

In youth's pride, and the painter, among men 
At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen, 

And shut about with his own frozen breath. 

To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith 
As poets, — only paint as painters, — then 
He turns in the cold silence ; and again 

Shrinking, " I am not as these are," he saith. 

And say that this is so, what follows it ? 
' For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head. 
Such words were well ; but they see on, and far. 
Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit 

Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead, — 
Say thou instead, " I am not as these are." 



194 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



III. The Husbandmen. 

Though God, as one that is an householder, 
Called these to labor in his vineyard first, 
Before the husk of darkness was well burst 
Bidding them grope their way out and bestir, 
(Who, questioned of their wages, answered, " Sir, 
Unto each man a penny : ") though the worst 
Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst : 
Though God hath since found none such as these were 
To do their work like them : — Because of this 
Stand not ye idle in the market-place. 
Which of ye knoweth he is not that last 
Who may be first by faith and will ? — yea, his 
The hand which after the appointed days 
And hours shall give a Future to their Past ? 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 95 



SONNET LXXVII. 

SOUL'S BEAUTY. 

Under the arch of Life, where love and death, 
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw- 
Beauty enthroned ; and though her gaze struck awe, 

I drew it in as simply as my breath. 

Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath, 

The sky and sea bend on thee, — which can draw. 
By sea or sky or woman, to one law, 

The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath. 

This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise 

Thy voice and hand shake still, — long known to thee 
By flying hair and fluttering hem, — the beat 
Following her daily of thy heart and feet. 
How passionately and irretrievably. 
In what fond flight, how many ways and days ! 



196 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET LXXVIII. 

BODY'S BEAUTY. 

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told 

(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) 

That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, 

And her enchanted hair was the first gold. 

And still she sits, young while the earth is old, 
And, subtly of herself contemplative, 
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, 

Till heart and body and life are in its hold. 

The rose and poppy are her flowers ; for where 
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent 

And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare ? 
Lo ! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went 
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent 

And round his heart one strangling golden hair. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 1 9; 



SONNET LXXIX. 

THE MONOCHORD. 

Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound 
That is Life's self and draws my life from me, 
And by instinct ineffable decree 

Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound ? 

Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd, 
That 'mid the tide of all emergency 
Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea 

Its difficult eddies labor in the ground ? 

Oh ! what is this that knows the road I came. 

The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame. 

The hfted shifted steeps and all the way? — 
That draws round me at last this wind-wann space, 
And in regenerate rapture turns my face 

Upon the devious coverts of dismay ? 



198 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET LXXX. 

FROM DAWN TO NOON. 

As the child knows not if his mother's face 
Be fair ; nor of his elders yet can deem 
What each most is ; but as of hill or stream 

At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place : 

Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half- weary race, 
Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam 
And gazing steadily back, — as through a dream, 

In things long past new features now can trace : — 

Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown 
Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all gray 

And marvellous once, where first it walked alone ; 
And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day. 
Which most or least impelled its onward way, — 

Those unknown things or these things overknown. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 199 



SONNET LXXXI. 



MEMORIAL THRESHOLDS. 

What place so strange, — though unrevealed snow 

With unimaginable fires arise 

At the earth's end, — what passion of surprise 
Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago ? 
Lo ! this is none but I this hour ; and lo ! 

This is the very place which to mine eyes 

Those mortal hours in vain immortaHze, 
'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know. 

City, of thine a single simple door, 

By some new Power reduplicate, must be 
Even yet my Hfe-porch in eternity. 
Even with one presence filled, as once of yore : 
Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor 
Thee and thy years and these my words and me. 



200 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET LXXXII. 

HOARDED JOY. 

I SAID : " Nay, pluck not, — let the first fruit be : 
Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red, 
But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head 

Sees in the stream its own fecundity 

And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we 
At the sun's hour that day possess the shade, 
And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade, 

And eat it from the branch and praise the tree? " 

I say : " Alas ! our fruit hath wooed the sun 

Too long, — 't is fallen and floats adown the stream. 

Lo, the last clusters ! Pluck them every one. 
And let us sup with summer ; ere the gleam 

Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free, 

And the woods wail like echoes from the sea.*^ 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 20I 



SONNET LXXXIII. 

BARREN SPRING. 

Once more the changed year's turning wheel returns : 
And as a girl sails balanced in the wind, 
And now before and now again behind 

Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns, - 

So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns 
No answering smile from me, whose Hfe is twin'd 
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind. 

And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns. 

Behold, this crocus is a withering flame \ 

This snowdrop, snow ; this apple-blossom's part 
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art. 

Nay, for these Spring- flowers, turn thy face from them. 

Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem 

The wliite cup shrivels round the golden heart. 



202 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET LXXXIV. 

FAREWELL TO THE GLEN. 

Sweet stream-fed glen, why say " farewell " to thee 
Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth 
The brow of Time where man may read no ruth ? 

Nay, do thou rather say " farewell " to me, 

Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy 

Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe 
By other streams, what while in fragrant youth 

The bliss of being sad made melancholy. 

And yet, farewell ! For better shalt thou fare 
When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow 

And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there 
In hours to come, than when an -hour ago 

Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear 
And thy trees whispered what he feared to know. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 203 



SONNET LXXXV. 
VAIN VIRTUES. 

What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell ? 
None of the sins, — but this and that fair deed 
Which a soul's sin at length could supersede. 

These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell 

Might once have sainted ; whom the fiends compel 
Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves 
Of anguish, while the pit's pollution leaves 

Their refuse maidenhood abominable. 

Night sucks them down, the tribute of the pit. 
Whose names, half entered in the book of Life, 
Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair 
And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit 
To gaze, but, yearning, waits his destined wife, 
The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there. 



204 THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 



SONNET LXXXVI. 

LOST DAYS. 

The lost days of my life until to-day, 

What were they, could I see them on the street 

Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat 
Sown once for food but trodden into clay ? 
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay ? 

Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet ? 

Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat 
The undying" throats of Hell, athirst alway ? 

I do not see them here ; but after death 
God knows I know the faces I shall see, 

Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 
" I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me ? " 

" And I — and I — thyself," (lo ! each one saith,) 
" And thou thyself to all eternity ! " 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 205 

SONNET LXXXVII. 

DEATH'S SONGSTERS. 

When first that horse, within whose populous womb 
The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate, 
Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight. 

Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home ; 

She whispered, " Friends, I am alone ; come, come ! " 
Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid. 
And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid 

His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb. 

The same was he who, lashed to his own mast. 

There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves. 

Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd, 

Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. . . . 

Say, soul, — are songs of Death no heaven to thee, 

Nor shames her Hp the cheek of Victory ? 



2o6 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET LXXXVIII. 

HERO'S LAMP.^ 

That lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name to-night, 
O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take 
To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake 

To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight. 

Aye, waft the unspoken vow : yet dawn's first light 
On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break \ 
While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake, 

Lo where Love walks. Death's pallid neophyte. 

That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine 
Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree) 
Till some one man the happy issue see 
Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine : 
Which still may rest unfir'd ; for, theirs or thine, 
O brother, what brought love to them or thee ? 

1 After the deaths of Leander and of Hero, the signal-lamp was 
dedicated to Anteros, with the edict that no man should light it 
unless his love had proved fortunate. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 20/ 



SONNET LXXXIX. 

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN. 

Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills ; and ye 
Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know 
And still stand silent : — is it all a show, — 

A wisp that laughs upon the wall ? — decree 

Of some inexorable supremacy 

Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise 
From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes, 

Sphinx-faced with unabashed augury ? 

Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke 
The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day 
Whose roots are hillocks where the children play ; 

Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke 

Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall 

wage 
Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age. 



208 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET XC. 

"RETRO ME, SATHANA!" 

Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled, 
Stooping against the wind, a charioteer 
Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair, 
So shall Time be ; and as the void car, hurled 
x^broad by reinless steeds, even so the world : 
Yea, even as chariot- dust upon the air. 
It shall be sought and not found anywhere. 
Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled. 
Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath 
Much mightiness of men to win thee praise. 
Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways. 
Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path, 
Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath 
For certain years, for certain months and days. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 209 



SONNET XCI. 



LOST ON BOTH SIDES. 



As when two men have loved a woman well, 

Each hatmg each, through Love's and Death's deceit ; 

Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet 
And the long pauses of this wedding-bell ; 
Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel 

At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat ; 

Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet 
The two lives left that most of her can tell : -^ 

So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed 
The one same Peace, strove with each other long, 
And Peace before their faces perished since : 
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood. 
They roam together now, and wind among 
Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns. 



14 



2IO 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 



SONNETS XCII., XCIIL 

THE SUN'S SHAME. 



I. 



Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught 
From Hfe j and mocking pulses that remain 
When the soul's death of bodily death is fain ; 

Honor unknown, and honor known unsought ; 

And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought 
On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane ; 
And longed-for woman longing all in vain 

For lonely man with love's desire distraught ; 

And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness, 
Given unto bodies of whose souls men say, 
None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they : — 

Beholding these things, I behold no less 

The blushing morn and blushing eve confess 
The shame that loads the intolerable day. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 21 



II. 



As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress 
Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth 
May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth, — 

" Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess. 

Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless ; " — 
Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal, 
And bitterly feels breathe against his soul 

The hour swift- winged of nearer nothingness : — 

Even so the World's gray Soul to the green World 

Perchance one hour must cry : " Woe 's me, for whom 
Inveteracy of ill portends the doom, — 

\Vhose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd : 
While thou even as of yore art journeying. 
All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring ! " 



212 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET XCIV. 



MICHELANGELO'S KISS. 



Great Michelangelo, with age growTi bleak 
And uttermost labors, having once o'ersaid 
All grievous memories on his long life shed, 

This worst regret to one true heart could speak : — 

That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek, 
He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed. 
His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed, — 

Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek. 



O Buonarruoti, — good at Art's fire-wheels 
To urge her chariot ! — even thus the Soul, 
Touching at length some sorely- chastened goal, 

Earns oftenest but a little : her appeals 

Were deep and mute, — lowly her claim. Let be : 
What holds for her Death's garner ? And for thee ? 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 21^ 

SONNET XCV. 
THE VASE OF LIFE. 

Around the vase of Life at your slow pace 

He has not crept, but turned it with his hands, 

And all its sides already understands. 
There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race ; 
Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space ; 

Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd ; 

Who weeps, nor stays for weeping ; who at last, 
A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face. 

And he has filled this vase with wine for blood, 
With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow. 
With watered flowers for buried love most fit ; 
And would have cast it shattered to the flood. 
Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole ; which now 
Stands empty till his ashes fall in it. 



214 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 

SONNET XCVL 

LIFE THE BELOVED. 

As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread, 
Somewhile unto thy sight perchance hath been 
Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen 

In thought, but to all fortunate favor wed ; 

As thy love's death-bound features never dead 
To memory's glass return, but contravene 
Frail fugitive days, and alway keep, I ween, 

Than all new life a livelier lovehhead : — 

So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love, 
Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger 
Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify ; 
Though pale she lay when in the winter grove 
Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her 
And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 215 

SONNET XCVII. 
A SUPERSCRIPTION. 

Look in my face ; my name is Might-have-been ; 

I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell ; 

Unto thine ear I hold the dead- sea shell 
Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between ; 
Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen 

Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell 

Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, 
Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. 

Mark me, how still I am ! But should there dart 
One moment through thy soul the soft surprise 
Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs, — 

Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart 

Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart 
Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes. 



2l6 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



SONNET XCVIII. 
HE AND I. 

Whence came his feet into my field, and why? 

How is it that he sees it all so drear? 

How do I see his seeing, and how hear 
The name his bitter silence knows it by? 
This was the little fold of separate sky 

Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere 

Drew living light from one continual year : 
How should he find it lifeless ? He, or I ? 

Lo ! this new Self now wanders round my field, 
With plaints for every flower, and for each tree 
A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary : 
And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield 
Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd, 
Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he. 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 2 1 J 

SONNETS XCIX., C. 

NEWBORN DEATH. 



To-day Death seems to me an infant child 
Which her worn mother Life upon my knee 
Has set to grow my friend and play with me ; 

If haply so my heart might be beguil'd 

To find no terrors in a face so mild, — 
If haply so my weary heart might be 
Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee, 

O Death, before resentment reconcil'd. 

How long, O Death ? And shall thy feet depart 
Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand 

Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart, 
What time with thee indeed I reach the strand 

Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art. 
And drink it in the hollow of thy hand ? 



2i8 THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 



4 



II. 



And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss, 

With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast, 
I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd, 

And in fair places found all bowers amiss 

Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss, 

While to the winds all thought of Death we cast : — 
Ah, Life ! and must I have from thee at last 

No smile to greet me and no babe but this? 

Lo ! Love, the child once ours ; and Song, whose hair 
Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath ; 

And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair ; 
These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath 

With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there : 
And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death ? 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE. 219 



SONNET CI. 
THE ONE HOPE. 

When vain desire at last and vain regret 
Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, 
What shall assuage the unforgotten pain 

And teach the unforgetful to forget ? 

Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet, — 
Or may the soul at once in a green plain 
Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain 

And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet? 

Ah ! when the wan soul in that golden air 
Between the scriptured petals softly blown 
Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown, — 
Ah ! let none other alien spell soe'er 
But only the one Hope's one name be there, — 
Not less nor more, but even that word alone. 



LYRICS, 

&c. 



SOOTHSAY. 



Let no man ask thee of anything 
Not yearborn between Spring and Spring. 
More of all worlds than he can know, 
Each day the single sun doth show. 
A trustier gloss than thou canst give 
From all wise scrolls demonstrative, 
The sea doth sigh and the wind sing. 

Let no man awe thee on any height 
Of earthly kingship's mouldering might. 
The dust his heel holds meet for thy brow 
Hath all of it been what both are now ; 
And thou and he may plague together 
A beggar's eyes in some dusty weather 
When none that is now knows sound or sight. 



224 SOOTHS A Y. 

Crave thou no dower of earthly thmgs 

Unworthy Hope's imaginmgs. 

To have brought true birth of Song to be 

And to have won hearts to Poesy, 

Or anywhere in the sun or rain 

To have loved and been beloved again, 

Is loftiest reach of Hope's bright wings. 

The wild waifs cast up by the sea 

Are diverse ever seasonably. 

Even so the soul-tides still may land 

A different drift upon the sand. 

But one the sea is evermore : 

And one be still, 'twixt shore and shore, 

As the sea's Hfe, thy soul in thee. 

Say, hast thou pride ? How then may fit 
Thy mood with flatterers' silk-spun wit? 
Haply the sweet voice lifts thy crest, 
A breeze of fame made manifest. 
Nay, but then chaf'st at flattery ? Pause : 
Be sure thy wrath is not because 
It makes thee feel thou lovest it. 



SOOTHSAY. 22 S 

Let thy soul strive that still the same 

Be early friendship's sacred flame. 

The affinities have strongest part 

In youth, and draw men heart to heart : 

As life wears on and finds no rest, 

The individual in each breast 

Is tyrannous to sunder them. 

In the life-drama's stem cue-call, 

A friend 's a part well-prized by all : 

And if thou meet an enemy, 

What art thou that none such should be ? 

Even so : but if the two parts run 

Into each other and grow one, 

Then comes the curtain's cue to fall. 

Whate'er by other's need is claimed 

More than by thine, — to him unblamed 

Resign it : and if he should hold 

What more than he thou lack'st, bread, gold, 

Or any good whereby we live, — 

To thee such substance let him give 

Freely : nor he nor thou be shamed. 

IS 



226 SOOTHSA Y. 

Strive that thy works prove equal : lest 
That work which thou hast done the best 
Should come to be to thee at length 
(Even as to envy seems the strength 
Of others) hateful and abhoiT'd, — 
Thine own above thyself made lord, — 
Of self-rebuke the bitterest. 

Unto the man of yearning thought 
And aspiration, to do nought 
Is in itself almost an act, — 
Being chasm-fire and cataract 
Of the soul's utter depths unseal'd. 
Yet woe to thee if once thou yield 
Unto the act of doing nought ! 

How callous seems beyond revoke 
The clock with its last listless stroke ! 
How much too late at length ! — to trace 
The hour on its forewarning face, 
The thing thou hast not dared to do ! . . . 
Behold, this may be thus ! Ere true 
It prove, arise and bear thy yoke. 



SOOTHSAY. 227 

Let lore of all Theology 

Be to thy soul what it can be : 

But know, — the Power that fashions man 

Measured not out thy Httle span 

For thee to take the meting-rod 

In turn, and so approve on God 

Thy science of Theometry. 

To God at best, to Chance at worst, 
Give thanks for good things, last as first. 
But windstrown blossom is that good 
Whose apple is not gratitude. 
Even if no prayer uplift thy face, 
Let the sweet right to render grace 
As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd. 

Didst ever say, " Lo, I forget" ? 
Such thought was to remember yet. 
As in a gravegarth, count to see 
The monuments of memory. 
Be this thy soul's appointed scope : — 
Gaze onward without claim to hope. 
Nor, gazing backward, court regret. 



228 CHIMES. 



CHIMES. 



Honey-flowers to the honey-comb 
And the honey-bees from home. 

A honey-comb and a honey-flower, 
And the bee shall have his hour. 

A honeyed heart for the honey-comb, 
And the humming bee flies home. 

A heavy heart in the honey-flower, 
And the bee has had his hour. 



I 



CHIMES, 229 



A honey- cell 's in the honeysuckle, 
And the honey-bee knows it well. 

The honey-comb has a heart of honey. 
And the humming bee 's so bonny. 

A honey-flower 's the honeysuckle, 
And the bee 's in the honey-bell. 

The honeysuckle is sucked of honey, 
And the bee is heavy and bonny. 



230 CHIMES. 



m. 

Brown shell -first for the butterfly 
And a bright wing by and by. 

Butterfly, good-bye to your shell, 
And, bright wings, speed you well. 

Bright lamplight for the butterfly 
And a burnt wing by and by. 



Butterfly, alas for your shell. 
And, bright wings, fare you well. 



CHIMES. 231 



IV. 



Lost love-labor and lullaby, 
And lowly let love lie. 

Lost love-morrow and love-fellow 
And love's life lying low. 

Lovelorn labor and life laid by 
And lowly let love lie. 

Late love-longing and life-sorrow 
And love's life lying low. 



232 CHIMES, 



Beauty's body and benison 
With a bosom-flower new-blown. 



Bitter beauty and blessing bann'd 
With a breast to burn and brand. 



Beauty's bower in the dust o'erblo\vn 
With a bare white breast of bone. 



Barren beauty and bower of sand 
With a blast on either hand. 



CHIMES. 233 



VI. 

Buried bars in the breakwater 
And bubble of the brimming weir. 

Body's blood in the breakwater 
And a buried body's bier. 

Buried bones in the breakwater 
And bubble of the brawling weir. 

Bitter tears in the breakwater 
And a breaking heart to bear. 



234 CHIMES, 



VII. 

Hollow heaven and the hurricane 
And hurry of the heavy rain. 

Hurried clouds in the hollow heaven 
And a heavy rain hard-driven. 

The heavy rain it hurries amain 
And heaven and the hurricane. 

Hurrying wind o'er the heaven's hollow 
And the heavy rain to follow. 



PARTED PRESENCE. 235 



PARTED PRESENCE. 



Love, I speak to your heart, 

Your heart that is always here. 

Oh draw me deep to its sphere, 
Though you and I are apart ; 
And yield, by the spirit's art, 

Each distant gift that is dear. 

O love, my love, you are here ! 

Your eyes are afar to-day, 

Yet, love, look now in mine eyes. 

Two hearts sent forth may despise 
All dead things by the way. 
All between is decay. 

Dead hours and this hour that dies, 

O love, look deep in mine eyes ! 



236 PARTED PRESENCE. 

Your hands to-day are not here. 

Yet lay them, love, in my hands. 

The hourglass sheds its sands 
All day for the dead hours' bier ; 
But now, as two hearts draw near. 

This hour like a flower expands. 

O love, your hands in my hands ! 

Your voice is not on the air. 

Yet, love, I can hear your voice : 
It bids my heart to rejoice 

As knowing your heart is there, — 

A music sweet to declare 

The truth of your steadfast choice. 
O love, how sweet is your voice ! 

To-day your lips are afar. 

Yet draw my lips to them, love. 

Around, beneath, and above, 
Is frost to bind and to bar ; 
But where I am and you are. 

Desire and the fire thereof. 

O kiss me, kiss me, my love ! 



PARTED PRESENCE. 237 

Your heart is never away, 

But ever with mine, for ever, 

For ever without endeavor, 
To-morrow, love, as to-day ; 
Two blent hearts never astray, 

Two souls no power may sever. 

Together, O my love, for ever ! 



238 



A DEATH-PARTING. 



A DEATH-PARTING. 

Leaves and rain and the days of the year, 

( Water-willow atid wellaway,) 
All these fall, and my soul gives ear, 
And she is hence who once was here. 
( With a wind blown night and day.) 

Ah ! but now, for a secret sign, 

( The willow V wan and the water white,) 
In the held breath of the day's decline 
Her very face seemed pressed to mine. 

( With a wind blown day and night.) 



O love, of my death my life is fain ; 

{The willows wave on the water-way,) 
Your cheek and mine are cold in the rain, 
But warm they '11 be when we meet again. 

( With a wind blown ?tight and day.) 



A DEATH -PARTING. 239 

Mists are heaved and cover the sky ; 

{The willows wail in the waning light,) 
O loose your lips, leave space for a sigh, — 
They seal my soul, I cannot die. 

( With a wind blown day and night.) 

Leaves and rain and the days of the year, 

( Water-willow ajid wellaway^) 
All still fall, and I still give ear. 
And she is hence, and I am here. 

( With a wind blown night and day.) 



240 SPHERAL CHANGE. 



SPHERAL CHANGE. 

In this new shade of Death, the show 
Passes me still of form and face ; 

Some bent, some gazing as they go. 
Some swiftly, some at a dull pace, 
Not one that speaks in any case. 

If only one might speak ! — the one 
Who never waits till I come near ; 

But always seated all alone 
As listening to the sunken air. 
Is gone before I come to her. 

O dearest ! while we lived and died 
A living death in every day. 

Some hours we still were side by side, 
When where I was you too might stay 
And rest and need not gO away. 



SPHERAL CHANGE, 24] 

O nearest, furthest ! Can there be 

At length some hard-earned heart-won home, 

Where, — exile changed for sanctuary, — 
Our lot may fill indeed its sum. 
And you may wait and I may come ? 



16 



242 Si/NSET WINGS. 



SUNSET WINGS. 

To-night this sunset spreads two golden wings 

Cleaving the western sky ; 
Winged too witli wind it is, and winno wings 
Of birds ; as if the day's last hour in rings 

Of strenuous flight must die. 

Sun-steeped in fire, the homeward pinions sway 

Above the dovecote-tops ; 
And clouds of starHngs, ere they rest with day, 
Sink, clamorous like mill-waters, at wild play, 

By turns in every copse : 

Each tree heart-deep the wrangling rout receives, — 

Save for the whirr within, 
You could not tell the starhngs from the leaves ; 
Then one great puff of wings, and the swarm heaves 

Away with all its din. 



SUA' SET WINGS. 243 

Even thus Hope's hours, in ever-eddying flight, 

To many a refuge tend ; 
With the first hght she laughed, and the last light 
Glows round her still ; who natheless in the night 

At length must make an end. 

And now the mustering rooks innumerable 

Together sail and soar, 
While for the day's death, like a tolling knell, 
Unto the heart they seem to cry, Farewell, 

No more, farewell, no more ! 

Is Hope not plumed, as 't were a fiery dart ? 

And oh ! thou dying day. 
Even as thou goest must she too depart, 
And Sorrow fold such pinions on the heart 

As will not fly away ? 



244 



SONG AND MUSIC. 



SONG AND MUSIC. 

O LKWE your hand where it Hes cool 

Upon the eyes whose Kds are hot : 
Its rosy shade is bountiful 

Of silence, and assuages thought. 
O lay your lips against your hand 

And let me feel your breath through it, 
While through the sense your song shall fit 

The soul to understand. 



The music lives upon my brain 

Between your hands within mine eyes ; 
It stirs your lifted throat like pain. 

An aching pulse of melodies. 
Lean nearer, let the music pause : 

The soul may better understand 
Your music, shadowed in your hand. 

Now while the sons: withdraws. 



THREE SHADOWS. 245 



1 " THREE SHADOWS. 



I LOOKED and saw your eyes 

In the shadow of your hair, 
As a traveller sees the stream 

In the shadow of the wood ; 
And I said, " My faint heart sighs, 

Ah me ! to linger there, 
To drink deep and to dream 

In that sweet soHtude." 

I looked and saw your heart 

In the shadow of your eyes, 
As a seeker sees the gold 

In the shadow of the stream ; 
And I said, " Ah me ! what art 

Should win the immortal prize, 
Whose want must make life cold 

And Heaven a hollow dream ? " 



246 THREE SHADOWS. 

I looked and saw your love 

In the shadow of your heart, 
As a diver sees the pearl 

In the shadow of the sea ; 
And I murmured, not above 

My breath, but all apart, — 
" Ah ! you can love, true girl. 

And is your love for me? " 



ALAS, SO LONG. 247 



ALAS, SO LONG! 

Ah ! dear one, we were young so long, 

It seemed that youth would never go, 
For skies and trees were ever in song 

And water in singing flow 
In the days we never again shall know. 
Alas, so long ! 
Ah ! then was it all Spring weather ? 
Nay, but we were young and together. 

Ah ! dear one, I Ve been old so long, 

It seems that age is loth to part, 
Though days and years have never a song. 

And oh ! have they still the art 
That warmed the pulses of heart to heart ? 
Alas, so long ! 
Ah ! then was it all Spring weather ? 
Nay, but we were young and together. 



248 



ALAS, SO LONG. 



Ah ! dear one, you Ve been dead so long, ■ 

How long until we meet again, 
Where hours may never lose their song 

Nor flowers forget the rain 
In glad noonlight that never shall wane ? 
Alas, so long ! 
Ah ! shall it be then Spring weather, 
And ah ! shall we be young together ? 



ADIEU. 249 



ADIEU. 

Waving whispering trees, 
What do you say to the breeze 

And what says the breeze to you ? 
'Mid passing souls ill at ease, 
Moving murmuring trees, 

Would ye ever wave an Adieu 

Tossing turbulent seas. 
Winds that wrestle with these, 

Echo heard in the shell, — 
'Mid fleeting life ill at ease. 
Restless ravening seas, — 

Would the echo sigh Farewell? 

Surging sumptuous skies, 
For ever a new surprise. 
Clouds eternally new, — 



250 



ADIEU. 



Is every flake that flies, 
Widening wandering skies, 
For a sign — Farewell, Adieu ? 



Sinking suffering heart 

That know'st how weary thou art. 

Soul so fain for a flight, — 
Aye, spread your wings to depart. 
Sad soul and sorrowing heart, — 

Adieu, Farewell, Good-night. 



INSOMNIA, 251 



INSOMNIA. 

Thin are the night-skirts left behind 
By daybreak hours that onward creep, 
And thin, alas ! the shred of sleep 

That wavers with the spirit's wind : 

But in half-dreams that shift and roll 
And still remember and forget, 

My soul this hour has drawn your soul 
A little nearer yet. 

Our lives, most dear, are never near, 
Our thoughts are never far apart, 
Though all that draws us heart to heart 

Seems fainter now and now more clear. 

To-night Love claims his full control. 
And with desire and with regret 

My soul this hour has drawn your soul 
A little nearer yet. 



252 INSOMNIA. 

Is there a home where heavy earth 

Melts to bright air that breathes no pain, 
Where water leaves no thirst again 

And springing fire is Love's new birth? 

If faith long bound to one true goal 
May there at length its hope beget, 

My soul that hour shall draw your soul 
For ever nearer yet. 



POSSESSION. 253 



POSSESSION. 

There is a cloud above the sunset hill, 

That wends and makes no stay, 
For its goal Hes beyond the fiery west ; 
A lingering breath no calm can chase away. 
The onward labor of the wind's last will ; 
A flying foam that overleaps the crest 
Of the top wave : and in possession still 
A further reach of longing ; though at rest 

From all the yearning years, 
Together in the bosom of that day 
Ye cling, and with your kisses drink your tears. 



254 THE CLOUD CONFINES,. 



THE CLOUD CONFINES. 

The day is dark and the night 

To him that would search their heart ; 
No lips of cloud that will part 
Nor morning song in the light : 
Only, gazing alone, 
To him wild shadows are shown, 
Deep under deep unknown 
And height above unknown height. 
Still we say as we go, — 

*' Strange to think by the way, 
Whatever there is to know, 
That shall we know one day." 

The Past is over and fled ; 

Named new, we name it the old ; 

Thereof some tale hath been told, 
But no word comes from the dead ; 



THE CLOUD CONFINES. 255 

Whether at all they be, 
Or whether as bond or free, 
Or whether they too were we. 
Or by what spell they have sped. 
Still we say as we go, — 

" Strange to think by the way, 
Whatever there is to know, 
That shall we know one day." 

What of the heart of hate 

That beats in thy breast, O Time ? — 
Red strife from the furthest prime, 
And anguish of fierce debate ; 
War that shatters her slain. 
And peace that grinds them as grain, 
And eyes fixed ever in vain 
On the pitiless eyes of Fate. 

Still we say as we go, — 

" Strange to think by the way, 
Whatever there is to know. 
That shall we know one day." 

What of the heart of love 

That bleeds in thy breast, O Man ? — 



256 THE CLOUD CONFINES. 

Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban 
Of fangs that mock them above ; 
Thy bells prolonged unto knells, 
Thy hope that a breath dispels, 
Thy bitter forlorn farewells 
And the empty echoes thereof? 

Still we say as \ve go, — 

" Strange to think by the way. 
Whatever there is to know, 
That shall we know one day." 

The sky leans dumb on the sea, 
Aweary with all its wings ; 
And oh ! the song the sea sings 
Is dark everlastingly. 
Our past is clean forgot. 
Our present is and is not. 
Our future 's a sealed seedplot, 
And what betwixt them are we ? — 
We who say as we go, — 

" Strange to think by the way, 
Whatever there is to know. 
That shall we know one day." 



I 



SONNETS. 



17 



FOR 

THE HOLY FAMILY, 

BY MICHELANGELO. 

{lit the National Gallery}) 

Turn not the prophet's page, O Son ! He knew 
All that thou hast to suffer, and hath writ. 
Not yet thine hour of knowledge. Infinite 

The sorrows that thy manhood's lot must rue 

And dire acquaintance of thy grief. That clue 
The spirits of thy mournful ministerings 
Seek through yon scroll in silence. For these things 

The angels have desired to look into. 

Still before Eden waves the fiery sword, — 

Her Tree of Life unransomed : whose sad Tree 
Of Knowledge yet to growth of Calvary 

Must yield its Tempter, — Hell the earliest dead 
Of Earth resign, — and yet, O Son and Lord, 

The Seed o' the woman bruise the serpent's head. 

1 In this picture the Virgin Mother is seen withholding from the 
Child Saviour the prophetic writings in which his sufferings are 
foretold. Angelic figures beside them examine a scroll. 



26o SONNETS. 

FOR 
SPRING, 

BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI. 
{In the Accademia of Florence.) 

What masque of what old wind- withered New- Year 
Honors this Lady ? ^ Flora, wanton-eyed 
For birth, and with all flowrets prankt and pied : 

Aurora,*Zephyms, with mutual cheer 

Of clasp and kiss : the Graces circling near, 

'Neath bower-Hnked arch of white arms glorified : 
And with those feathered feet which hovering glide 

O'er Spring's brief bloom, Hermes the harbinger. 

Birth-bare, not death-bare yet, the young stems stand, 
This Lady's temple-columns : o'er her head 
Love wings his shaft. What mystery here is read 

Of homage or of hope ? But how command 

Dead Springs to answer? And how question here 
These mummers of that wind-withered New- Year ? 

1 The same lady, here surrounded by the masque of Spring, is 
evidently the subject of a portrait by Botticelli formerly in the 
Pourtales collection in Paris. This portrait is inscribed " Smer- 
alda Bandinelli." 



SONNETS. 261 

FIVE ENGLISH POETS. 

I. THOMAS CHATTERTON. 

With Shak^peare's manhood at a boy's wild heart, — 
Through Hamlet's doubt to Shakspeare near allied, 
And kin to Milton through his Satan's pride, — 

At Death's sole door he stooped, and craved a dart ; 

And to the dear new bower of England's art, — ' 
Even to that shrine Time else had deified. 
The unuttered heart that soared against his side, — 

Drove the fell point, and smote life's seals apart. 

Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton ; 
The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace 
Up RedcHffe's spire ; and in the world's armed space 

Thy gallant sword-play : — these to many an one 

Are sweet for ever ; as thy grave unknown 
And love-dream of thine unrecorded face. 



262 SONNETS. 



II. WILLIAM BLAKE. 
(To Frederick Shields, on his Sketch of Blake's work-room 

AND death-room, 3, FOUNTAIN CoURT, StrAND.) 

This is the place. Even here the^dauntless soul, 
The unflinching hand, wrought on ; till in that ncok, 
As on that very bed, his life partook 

New birth, and passed. Yon river's dusky shoal, 

Whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll, 

Faced his work-window, whence his eyes would stare. 
Thought- wandering, unto nought that met them there. 

But to the unfettered irreversible goal. 

This cupboard. Holy of Holies, held the cloud 
Of his soul ^vrit and limned ; this other one, 

His true wife's charge, full oft to their abode 
Yielded for daily bread the martyr's stone. 
Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone, 

The words now home-speech of the mouth of God. 



SONNETS. 263 



III. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove 
The father-songster plies the hour-long quest,) 
To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest ; 

But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above 

Their callow fledgling progeny still hove 

With tented roof of wings and fostering breast 
Till the Soul fed the soul- brood. Richly blest 

From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love. 

Yet ah ! Like desert pools that show the stars 

Once in long leagues, — even such the scarce-snatched 
hours 

Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers : — 
Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars. 

Six years, from sixty saved ! Yet kindling skies 

Own them, a beacon to our centuries. 



264 SONNETS. 



IV. JOHN KEATS. 

The weltering London ways where children weep 

And girls whom none call maidens laugh, — strange 

road 
Miring his outward steps, who inly trode 

The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep : — 

Even such his life's cross-paths ; till deathly deep 
He toiled through sands of Lethe ; and long pain, 
Weary with labor spurned and love found vain. 

In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep. 

O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips 
And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse, — 

Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er, — 
Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ 
But rumor' d in water, while the fame of it 

Along Time's flood goes echoing evermore. 



SONNETS. 265 



V. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

(Inscription for the couch, still preserved, on which he 

PASSED the last NIGHT OF HIS LIFE.) 

'TwiXT those twin worlds, — the world of Sleep, which 
gave 
No dream to warn, — the tidal world of Death, 
Which the earth's sea, as the earth, replenisheth, — 

Shelley, Song's orient sun, to breast the wave, 

Rose from this couch that morn. Ah ! did he brave 
Only the sea? — or did man's deed of hell 
Engulph his bark 'mid mists impenetrable ? . . . . 

No eye discerned, nor any power might save. 

When that mist cleared, O Shelley ! what dread veil 
Was rent for thee, to whom far-darkling Truth 
Reigned sovereign guide through thy brief ageless 
youth ? 

Was the Truth thy Truth, SheUey ? — Hush ! All-Hail, 
Past doubt, thou gav'st it ; and in Truth's bright sphere 
Art first of praisers, being most praised here. 



266 SONNETS. 



TIBER, NILE, AND THAMES. 

The head and hands of murdered Cicero, 
Above his seat high in the Forum hung. 
Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rung 

Of a swift- mounted ladder, all aglow, 

Fulvia, Mark Antony's shameless wife, with show 
Of foot firm-poised and gleaming arm upflung, 
Bade her sharp needle pierce that god- like tongue 

Whose speech fed Rome even as the Tiber's flow. 

And thou, Cleopatra's Needle, that hadst thrid 
Great skirts of Time ere she and Antony hid 

Dead hope ! — hast thou too reached, surviving death, 
A city of sweet speech scorned, — on whose chill stoiie 
Keats withered, Coleridge pined, and Chatterton, 

Breadless, with poison froze the God-fired breath ? 



SONNETS. 267 



THE LAST THREE FROM TRAFALGAR 

At the Anniversary Banquet, 
2 1 ST October, 187*. 

In grappled ships around The Victory, 

Three boys did England's Duty with stout cheer. 
While one dread truth was kept from every ear, 

More dire than deafening fire that churned the sea : 

For in the flag-ship's weltering cockpit, he 
Who was the Battle's Heart without a peer, 
He who had seen all fearful sights save Fear, 

Was passing from all life save Victory. 

And round the old memorial board to-day. 

Three graybeards — each a warworn British Tar - 
View through the mist of years that hour afar : 
Who soon shall greet, 'mid memories of fierce fray, 
The impassioned soul which on its radiant way 
Soared through the fiery cloud of Trafalgar. 



268 SONNETS. 

CZAR ALEXANDER THE SECOND. 

(13TH March, 188 i.) 

From him did forty million serfs, endow'd 
Each with six feet of death-due soil, receive 
Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave 

Their country's harvest. These to-day aloud 

Demand of Heaven a Father's blood, — sore bow'd 

With tears and thrilled with wrath; who, while they 

grieve. 
On every guilty head would fain achieve 

All torment by his edicts disallow'd. 

He stayed the knout's red-ravening fangs ; and first 
Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go 
White to the tomb. While he, — laid foully low 
With limbs red-rent, with festering brain which erst 
Willed kingly freedom, — 'gainst the deed accurst 
To God bears witness of his people's woe. 



^ 



SONNETS. 269 



WORDS ON THE WIN DOW-PAN E.i 

Did she in summer write it, or in spring, 
Or with this wail of autumn at her ears. 
Or in some winter left among old years 

Scratched it through tettered cark ? A certain thing 

That round her heart the frost was hardening. 
Not to be thawed of tears, which on this pane 
Channelled the rime, perchance, in fevered rain. 

For false man's sake and love's most bitter sting. 

Howbeit, between this last word and the next 
Unwritten, subtly seasoned was the smart, 

And here at least the grace to weep : if she. 
Rather, midway in her disconsolate text. 
Rebelled not, loathing from the trodden heart 

That thing which she had found man's love to be. 

1 For a woman's fragmentary inscription. 



270 SONNETS, 



WINTER. 

How large that thrush looks on the bare thorn-tree ! 

A swarm of such, three little months ago, 

Had hidden in the leaves and let none know 
Save by the outburst of their minstrelsy. 
A white flake here and there — a snow-lily 

Of last night's frost — our naked flower-beds hold ; 

And for a rose-flower on the darkling mould 
The hungry redbreast gleams. No bloom, no bee. 

The current shudders to its ice-bound sedge : 
Nipped in their bath, the stark reeds one by one 
Flash each its clinging diamond in the sun : 
'Neath winds which for this Winter's sovereign pledge 
Shall curb great king-masts to the ocean's edge 
And leave memorial forest-kings o'erthrown. 



SONNETS. 271 



SPRING. 

Soft-littered is the new-year's lambing-fold, 
And in the hollowed haystack at its side 
The shepherd lies o' nights now, wakeful-eyed 

At the ewes' travailing call through the dark cold. 

The young rooks cheep 'mid the thick caw o' the old : 
And near unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground. 
By her spring-cry the moorhen's nest is found. 

Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold. 

Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower. 
And chill the current where the young reeds stand 
As green and close as the young wheat on land : 
Yet here the cuckoo and the cuckoo-flower 
Plight to the heart Spring's perfect imminent hour 
Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one's 
hand. 



2']2 SONNETS. 



THE CHURCH-PORCH. 

Sister, first shake we off the dust we have 
Upon our feet, lest it defile the stones 
Inscriptured, covering their sacred bones 

Who lie i' the aisles which keep the names they gave. 

Their trust abiding round them in the grave ; 
Whom painters paint for visible orisons, 
And to whom sculptors pray in stone and bronze ; 

Their voices echo still like a spent wave. 

Without here, the church-bells are but a tune. 
And on the carven church-door this hot noon 

Lays all its heavy sunshine here without : 
But having entered in, we shall find there 
Silence, and sudden dimness, and deep prayer. 

And faces of crowned angels all about. 



SONNETS. 273 



UNTIMELY LOST. 

(Oliver Madox Brown. Born 1855 ; 
Died 1874.) 

Upon the landscape of his coming life 

A youth high-gifted gazed, and found it fair : 

The heights of work, the floods of praise, were there. 

What friendships, what desires, what love, what wife ? — 

All things to come. The fanned springtide was rife 
With imminent solstice ; and the ardent air 
Had summer sweets and autumn fires to bear ; — 

Heart's ease full-pulsed with perfect strength for strife. 

A mist has risen : we see the youth no more : 
Does he see on and strive on ? And may we 
Late-tottering worldworn hence, find his to be 

The young strong hand which helps us up that shore ? 

Or, echoing the No More with Nevermore, 

Must Night be ours and his ? We hope : and he ? 



18 



274 SONNETS. 



PLACE D5: LA BASTILLE, PARIS. 

How dear the sky has been above this place ! 
Small treasures of this sky that we see here 
Seen weak tlirough prison-bars from year to year ; 

Eyed with a painful prayer upon God's grace 

To save, and tears that stayed along the face 
Lifted at sunset. Yea, how passing dear, 
Those nights when through the bars a wind left clear 

The heaven, and moonlight soothed the limpid space ! 

So was it, till one night the secret kept 
Safe in low vault and stealthy corridor 

Was blown abroad on gospel-tongues of flame. 
O ways of God, mysterious evermore ! 
How many on this spot have cursed and wept 

That all might stand here now and own Thy Name. 



SONNETS. 275 

"FOUND." 

(FOR A PICTURE.) 

" There is a budding morrow in midnight : " — 
So sang our Keats, our English nightingale. 
And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale 

In London's smokeless resurrection-light, 

Dark breaks to dawn. But o'er the deadly blight 
Of love deflowered and sorrow of none avail 
Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail, 

Can day from darkness ever again take flight ? 

Ah ! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge. 
Under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge 

In gloaming courtship ? And O God ! to-day 
He only knows he holds her ; — but what part 
Can life now take ? She cries in her locked heart, — 

" Leave me — I do not know you — go away ! " 



276 SONNETS. 



A SEA-SPELL. 

(FOR A PICTURE.) 

Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree, 

While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell 
Between its chords ; and as the wild notes swell, 

The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea. 

But to what sound her listening ear stoops she ? 
What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear, 
In answering echoes from what planisphere, 

Along the wind, along the estuary ? 

She sinks into her spell : and when full soon 
Her lips move and she soars into her song, 
What creatures of the midmost main shall throng 

In furrowed surf- clouds to the summoning rune : 
Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry. 
And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die ? 



SONNETS. 277 



FIAMMETTA. 

(FOR A PICTURE.) 

Behold Fiammetta, shown in Vision here. 

Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she stands ; 

And as she sways the branches with her hands, 
Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer, 
In separate petals shed, each like a tear ; 

While from the quivering bough the bird expands 

His wings. And lo ! thy spirit understands 
Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death drawn 
near. 

All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air : 
The angel circling round her aureole 
Shimmers in flight against the tree's gray bole : 

While she, with reassuring eyes most fair, 

A presage and a promise stands ; as 't were 

On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul. . 



278 SONNETS. 

THE DAY-DREAM. 

(FOR A PICTURE.) 

The thronged boughs of the shadowy sycamore 

Still bear young leaflets half the summer through ; 

From when the robin 'gainst the unhidden blue 
Perched dark, till now, deep in the leafy core, 
The embowered throstle's urgent wood-notes soar 

Through summer silence. Still the leaves come new ; 

Yet never rosy-sheathed as those which drew 
Their spiral tongues from spring-buds heretofore. 

Within the branching shade of Reverie 

Dreams even may spring till autumn : yet none be 

Like woman's budding day-dream spirit-fann'd. 
Lo ! tow'rd deep skies, not deeper than her look, 
She dreams ; till now on her forgotten book 

Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand. 



SONNETS. 279 

ASTARTE SYRIACA. 

(FOR A PICTURE.) 

Mystery : lo ! betwixt the sun and moon 

Astarte of the Syrians : Venus Queen 

Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen 
Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon 
Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune : 

And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean 

Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean 
The pulse of hearts to the spheres' dominant tune. 

Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel 
All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea 
The witnesses of Beauty's face to be : 

That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell 

Amulet, talisman, and oracle, — 

Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery. 



28o SONNETS. 



PROSERPINA. 

(PER UN QUADRO.) 

LUNGi h la luce che in su questo muro 

Rifrange appena, un breve istante scorta 

Del rio palazzo alia soprana porta. 
Lungi quel fiori d'Eima, O lido oscuro, 
Dal frutto tuo fatal che omai m'e duro. 

Lungi quel cielo dal tartareo manto 

Che qui mi cuopre : e lungi ahi lungi ahi quanto 
Le notti che saran dai di che furo. 

Lungi da me mi sento ; e ognor sognando 
Cerco e ricerco, e resto ascoltatrice ; 
E qualche cuore a qualche anima dice, 
(Di cui mi giunge il suon da quando in quando, 
Continuamente insieme sospirando,) — 
" Oime per te, Proserpina infelice 1 " 



SONNETS. 281 



PROSERPINA. 

(FOR A PICTURE.) 

Afar away the light that brings cold cheer 
Unto this wall, — one instant and no more 
Admitted at my distant palace-door. 

Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear 

Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here. 
Afar those skies from this Tartarean gray 
That chills me : and afar, how far away, 

The nights that shall be from the days that were. 

Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing 
Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign : 
And still some heart unto some soul doth pine, 

(Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring. 

Continually together murmuring,) — 

" Woe 's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine ! " 



282 SONNETS. 



LA BELLA MANO. 

(PER UN QUADRO.) 

O BELLA Mano, che ti lavi e piaci 
In quel medesmo tuo puro elemento 
Donde la Dea dell' amoroso avvento 

Nacque, (e dalF onda s'infuocar le faci 

Di mille inispegnibili fomaci) : — 
Come a Venere a te I'oro e Targento 
Offron gli Amori ; e ognun riguarda attento 

La bocca che sorride e te che taci. 

In dolce modo dove onor t' invii 

Vattene adorna, e porta insiem fra tante 
Di Venere e di vergine sembiante ; 
Umilemente in luoghi onesti e pii 
Bianca e soave ognora ; infin che sii, 
O Mano, mansueta in man d'amante. 



SONNETS. 283 



LA BELLA MANO. 

(FOR A PICTURE.) 

O LOVELY hand, that thy sweet self dost lave 
In that thy pure and proper element, 
Whence erst the Lady of Love's high advent 

Was born, and endless fires sprang from the wave : - 

Even as her Loves to her their offerings gave, 
For thee the jewelled gifts they bear ; while each 
Looks to those lips, of music-measured speech 

The fount, and of more bliss than man may crave. 

In royal wise ring-girt and bracelet-spann'd, 
A flower of Venus' own virginity, 

Go shine among thy sisterly sweet band ; 
In maiden-minded converse delicately 
Evermore white and soft ; until thou be, 

O hand ! heart-handsel'd in a lover's hand. 



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